


A voice inside me sang your name

by Fata_Morgana



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, Celtic Mythology & Folklore, Discussions of Past Trauma, Future Fic, Inspired by the Raven Cycle, Ireland, Irish Language, M/M, Minor Mentions of Violence, Post-The Raven King, minor cussing, past trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-05
Updated: 2020-07-05
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:08:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 35,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25085929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fata_Morgana/pseuds/Fata_Morgana
Summary: Adam Parrish has recently gotten engaged, he works for a prestigious law firm in DC and he is about to be made partner. His life is millions miles away from the trailer park in Henrietta, he has accomplished all he has ever wanted, so when the call of an ancient, magical forest starts resonating inside him he is faced not just with his past, but with the possibility that his present is not what he really wants.
Relationships: Adam Parrish/Original Female Character(s), Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish
Comments: 22
Kudos: 67
Collections: TRC Big Bang 2020





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story has been brewing inside of me for over a year and has taken me places I did not know I needed to go. It is, obviously, inspired by the Raven Cycle but it has no connection to Ms Stiefvater’s Dreamer Trilogy. I have taken parts of the magical universe created by Ms Stiefvater and added elements of Celtic and Irish mythology to it, there are references to well known elements of the Arthurian Legend, but also lesser known elements and for those I have provided notes and references. 
> 
> I want to thank [Prithvi](https://campbraceyourself.tumblr.com/)  
> for being not just an amazing Beta-Reader, but also for continuous support and kindness throughout the whole process, she was invaluable.  
> Any remaining mistakes are all mine.
> 
> Beautiful art has been provided by the wonderful [Pank0](https://pank0.tumblr.com/)  
> go to her Tumblr and tell her how great she is. 
> 
> I hope you will enjoy this story of discovery and hard fought happiness.

The announcement is elegantly displayed at the top of the lifestyle page of the Washington Post:

“Mr. and Mrs. John Mcrory announce the engagement of their daughter Annabel May Mcrory of Annapolis, Maryland to Adam Parrish of Henrietta, Virginia. The happy couple will celebrate with friends and families at…”

Adam closes the newspaper, folds the pages back to their original shape and, while exiting the train drops the Washington Post in the nearest bin.

The city is washed grey by February rain, and he walks briskly to the office, it’s still early and he feels as if he has just left the office, but sleep was unwelcome last night, and he is busy at work. He is always busy at work, so this is the best use of his time; hard work is part of who he is, maybe all he is these days.

_“It wasn’t always like this… you had magic before…”_

The whisper comes unbidden in his deaf ear, a rustling of leaves lilting with sadness.

He stops abruptly, his hand to his ear, a tap as if to erase the memory, the phantom pain of loss and regrets. He does it twice more for good measure, but the leaves are quiet once again having said what they needed; they know he won’t forget anyway.

The cleaners are still at work when he gets to his office, he knows all of their faces, but none of their names, as if they are just ghosts overing around the edges of this world he fought so hard to belong to.

His office is on the seventh floor at “McCabe, Arland & Grey attorneys at law”; he had started working for them right out of law school, having been headhunted by Mr Anton Arland himself, Harvard alumni class of '69. That day, with a job offer in his hand and a Harvard Law degree he should have felt complete elation, a deep boned satisfaction for all he had been able to accomplish, but truth was that all had felt was a deep sense of emptiness, a question echoing in his head of “what now?”

He had silenced the question with work, passing the bar, getting recognised in work, hours upon hours spent at the office, engaging in social occasions and finding his footing among the other lawyers and his clients. He had silenced it for ten years until last Christmas at Annabel’s parents house. She had worked for weeks to make sure that the party was going to be a success, she was invested in his career almost as much as he was and she wanted for the partner at his firm to be impressed and to see that Adam was bringing many more assets to the McCabe, Arland and Grey, not just his hard work and dedication, but connections, money and great breeding.  
She was aware of his familial shortcoming (as she used to call his abusive parents and dirt poor upbringing) and she was determined to outweigh them with the sheer force of her determination and the fact that her mother was a Congresswoman, and her father was a judge. And so he was grateful, and he counted his blessings and he smiled because he had worked damn hard to be where he was, but no amount of work was ever going to make up for where he was born and who his parents were, but Annabel could.

She had been wearing a beautiful emerald green dress, her blond hair softly framing her delicate face, and he had kissed her under the mistletoe among the clapping and cheering of the crowd, just after he had slipped the ring on her finger.

_“Revenite…"  
"Revenite ad me…"_

The whisper had come unbidden, as always, breathing sound in his deaf ear, and it had ripped through over ten years of silence.

“Darling, are you okay…”

Annabel’s voice was gentle, her face still so close he could see the soft shimmering of her foundation beginning to fade under the lights. He had assured that everything was fine and kissed her again, for good measure, eliciting more clapping.

That had been the beginning.

Two months later and the voices are a constant, whispered rustling that it’s getting harder and harder to ignore or tune out. Sleeping is a luxury he can barely afford, as the voices filter into his dreams with long, insistent fingers, touching everything, turning everything into words, snippet of conversations from long ago, breathing with the heat of Virginia's summers, painting the dark deep green of the forest…But Adam won’t say its name. He won’t say what it is. He will not let this echo of what it was, of what he thought he could have been, bring him back to where he was.

He turns his computer on and starts working, the darkness outside his window is just beginning to lighten, the sky a square of sharpened aluminum threatening more rain. He turns the lamp of his desk on and forgets. He forgets everything but who he is. The past is gone, no one can call it back, not even a magical, sentient forest. Especially a forest Adam is refusing to acknowledge. He will not offer himself again.

He is already in shackles.

His new client is Crawford Gooch, a man with a lot of old money and an old wife he wants to trade in for a newer model; something the current Mrs. Gooch is, understandably, upset about.  
The divorce is acrimonious, and Adam’s only consolation is that there are no minor children involved in the mess that is Gooch vs. Gooch. He spends his morning prepping his client for the upcoming negotiation meeting, but he can already foresee the screaming match that will ensue and the fact that himself and the other lawyer will have to spend another week trying to redraft the agreement on how to split their assets. As a divorce attorney Adam has made his creed to never judge a client, after all they pay his wages and they are responsible for the fact that at thirty-two he has paid off all his student debt, and he has almost the deposit to buy an apartment without having to use Annabel’s name to get a loan. He doesn’t judge, but it’s harder with someone like Crawford Gooch, someone who has made his money on the back of his daddy’s involvement with the Italian mafia and he is now a shady real estate tycoon, and he is about to marry a twenty-six years old yoga instructor. On the cliché scale, “Just call me Crawford - Gooch”, is hitting a perfect ten.

“Crawford, your wife’s lawyer has sent over their recent discoveries and I am afraid your Caymans’ account has been included in the new list of shareable assets…”

The follow up to his new revelation is followed by a lengthy rant filled with expletives, and Adam does his best to calm his client and to explain that they still have time to come to an agreement before the litigation will bring out any other secret accounts Mrs. Gooch’s team may discover.

_“We used to know you…”_

“That bitch, won’t get a single dime!”

_“Come back to us…”_

“She thinks she can get half? She can go to hell for all I care, but she will not touch my cars.”

_“Come back to us…”_

“I’m sure she’s fucking her lawyer, can we use it to stop them doing more damage? There must be a law against it. Conflict of interest or something like that! I will bring you proof, I will have them followed.”

_“We will help you…”_

Adam stands up suddenly, his hands on the mahogany table in the conference room , knuckles white, breathing heavily, and Crawford Gooch stops mid-rant. “You okay, son?”

Adam hates it. He hates it. He hates the condescending tone, the entitled, obnoxious behavior, the bottomless greed. He hates it.

“Yes, of course Mr. Gooch... Crawford. I just had a great idea. Wait here, I need to check something in my office and I will be right back. Don’t stress, I will make sure that she will not get any of your cars. I already have a strategy.”

He walks out the conference room with as much composure he can manage, but behind the closed door of his office he slides down to the floor, hands over his ears, furious in his impotence.

“Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop…. You are gone. You are gone. He’s gone…. He’s gone.”

He scrunches his eyes shut, but the light behind them is bright with the flush of summer, filled with the high pitched voice of a child and the cawing of a raven and his hands are filled with the red Virginian soil and he can feel him, he can feel him, he can smell the sharp tang of his sweat, he can taste the burring softness of his voice in his own mouth.

_“Find him....”_

He forces his eyes open and stands up. In his hand there’s a single black feather.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Revenite ad me = Come back to me [Translation here](https://www.bing.com/search?q=revenite+ad+me+translation&cvid=b7ea73812f5743ccb6281ecd4cbf8646&FORM=ANNTA1&DAF1=1&PC=DCTS)


	2. Chapter 2

March comes with more rain, and Adam manages to get Crawford Gooch the divorce he wanted, cars and several more secret accounts included. It’s a big win and Mr. Arland comes to congratulate him in person. 

Adam has not had a full night sleep in seventy-two days and he is living off coffee, protein bars and his stubbornness, but the edges are fraying and he is not sure how long he will be able to keep this up. 

They are sitting in Anton Arland’s office, and Adam is sipping the excellent scotch he has been offered; he had woken up at three in the morning by a sharp pain in his palm, the hollow tip of another feather piercing his skin. 

“You have been an asset to this firm since the beginning, Adam. I was sure I had made the right choice when I made you my offer that day at Harvard, and you have proved me right time and time again. The Gooch case was a tough one and you handled it superbly…”

There are more self congratulatory compliments aimed his way, but Adam is having difficulties remaining engaged, his thoughts are tangled together by too little sleep and too many memories and all he wants is some peace.

“... the vote will take place in three weeks time but, between you and me, I wanted to let you know that you have mine and Guy’s vote. You are going to be the youngest partner at McCabe, Arland and Grey. Congratulations.”

Adam, who has been working all his life for a moment like this, knows exactly what to do, and his handshake is firm, a proud smile in place on his handsome face and his words are impeccably appropriate. He is humbled by the faith bestowed upon his abilities and he will work hard to prove that the choice the firm has made is the right one. Anton bestows him another self congratulatory “well done” before letting him go back to his work and Adam makes it all the way to the bathroom on the sixth floor before throwing up.

The reflection in the mirror is the one of a tired, thirty-two years old man, but Adam is still scared to see his seventeen years self there, scared, alone and haunted by a demon ready to steal away everything and everyone he has ever managed to love.

He stares at the light reflecting against the polished surface of the sink for a long time searching for an answer, but he realises he doesn’t know how to ask the questions anymore. He has not touched a deck of tarot cards in almost fifteen years and scrying is something that belongs to his past, something he has buried deep with everything and everyone else.

He whispers it to his reflection: “What do you want from me?”, afraid that someone can catch him talking to himself, and even more afraid that his reflection will actually reply. 

But the question remains unanswered; and Adam has to put himself back together piece by piece, methodically, one broken thought at the time. After all he has always been good at putting things back together, from engines to his fractured life, he just needs to remember where all the pieces go.

He calls Annabel to tell her about the good news and she is genuinely happy for him, her sweet voice is filled with pride and joy. She wastes no time in telling him that this deserves a celebration, no matter that the final and official decision has not been made yet.

“That’s a mere formality and you know it. They are smart men, and they know that you could go to any other firm and they would steal you right from under their noses, you are going to be the youngest partner ever in one of the most prestigious law offices in the city and we have a lot of lawyers in DC! Darling, we have to celebrate. Mummy and Daddy will be so happy and we can have dinner at their house in Virginia beach, we can make a weekend out of it. We haven’t been in a while and spring it's on its way."

Once Annabel starts there is no stopping her, Adam knows that everything will be arranged and ready in a matter of hours, all he has to do is to say yes and show up. Annabel’s strong personality is one of the first things he had liked about her. They had met at Harvard, when he had gone with Anton Arland to recruit some new hopefuls, and there she was, among a gaggle of alpha males, and she had stood out not only for her sharp mind, but for her ability to be quintessentially charming in all her southern sweetness, and yet completely ruthless in her ambitions. 

On their first date she had told him that her primary goal was to be a Senator and then the sky was the limit, and he had toasted at her future presidency without an ounce of irony. They had known each other for less than a week by then, but he already knew that the woman sitting across from him not only matched his ambition, but surpassed it. 

Five years later and he is on the verge of everything he has ever wanted, a successful career, a partner who is his equal, and a bright, shining future, and yet all he can taste in his mouth is ashes. He wakes up smelling smoke, the tendrils of vines still tied around his wrists, the feathers piercing his palm, the whispered voices echoing.

_“Magician…”_


	3. Chapter 3

The drive to Virginia beach is one has done several times before, and this part of Virginia has nothing to do with the past that, up until a few months ago, he had managed to bury within the folds of all his fears. There are no dirt roads here, no trailer parks, no derelict factories, no pastures with sleeping cows, no thick carpets of chickweed; everything is pristine and filled with the salty brine of the ocean, quaint in that affected way that can only be provided by wealth masquerading as old fashion charm. 

They make it to the house by sunset and they find Annabel’s parents having drinks on the back porch overlooking the ocean, picture perfect of a couple of genteel southerners.

Annabel’s parents have always liked Adam, a self made man himself, Mr. Mcrory admires his determination, and her mother has based her whole political campaign on social and economic justice for the less fortunate, and Adam’s humble origins (as Mrs. Mcrory politely puts it), are an endorsement to the truthfulness of her intentions. 

Dinner is a casual and relaxed affair, and Adam is relieved that Annabel has agreed not to have a proper party until after his promotion is official, but the congratulations are heartfelt and, even if part of him still wonders if these people are just humoring him, the rational part of his brain knows that Annabel loves him and both her and her parents are happy for him. 

After dinner Mr. and Mrs. Mcrory retire early claiming work and an early round of golf in the morning, so Adam and Annabel take the opportunity to walk down the beach and spend some time alone. The air is still cold in early spring, wind a living thing with sharp teeth, but the moon is a fat disc in the sky, shining over the water of the Atlantic Ocean, and with his arm wrapped tight around Annabel’s waist, her hair soft brushing his chin he almost feels happy. 

There are no whispered words in his ear right now, no ghosts of what once was, or what could have been, no memories. It’s just the present, just what he has made of his life. What he has achieved. His job, his life, his future wife. His future success.

This is it. This is all his doing. No one can touch this.

Annabel kisses him lightly on his cheek and rubs her cold nose on his neck making him yelp.

“God, you are cold. Do you want to go back inside?”

She smiles and snuggles closer to him. She is not always this physically affectionate, so he holds her close and keeps walking, making sure that she is shielded from the worst of the wind. 

“I have fallen in love with this place the first time I saw it…” Annabel’s voice is soft, a burr of nostalgia fuelled by the excellent red wine they had for dinner. “When mom had to move to Washington I was so sad to leave Annapolis. I have always loved the water and I cried and cried when she told me we had to move. They bought this house after her first year in office…"

She stops by the edge of the surf and picks up a small shell sticking out of the sand; there is a house just across a small strip of sand and rock, a modest one by the place’s standard, but it has clearly been repainted and refurbished recently and there is a For Sale sign planted just off the sandy strip of land they are standing. 

Annabel points at the house and smiles. Adam can feel the trickle of fear sneaking its way beneath the layers of self assurance he has wrapped himself with. 

“Isn't it pretty? I mean it is a bit small, but for the two of us I think it would be perfect."

Adam waits several seconds before replying, trying to find the correct thing to say, Most of the times Annabel's suggestions are actually requests, sometimes downright demands. 

He opts for a diversion tactic.

"Do you want to move here? I thought we decided we were going to live in the city? It would be a very long commute for the two of us. You have earlier starts than mine most of the time…"

She humors him with a small laugh, she knows he is not dense, and she is hoping that the soft sell approach will work, she is not the chief lobbyist for one of the rising stars in the Senate for nothing. 

"Oh darling, of course not. There is no way we can commute to and from DC, but this could be a really nice place to come to for the weekend. You love it here, Coralynn and Greg have a house here as well, and my parents obviously. Think about how lovely it is going to be in the summer; we can have fourth of July parties and celebrate your birthday as well. It's going to be wonderful."

Adam and Annabel argue very rarely. They are both pragmatic in nature and they are able to figure out most of their problems by simply analyzing every angle of the issue. This is not one of those times. There is nothing to analyze here. Annabel wants this house, and he knows that he will not be able to afford buying their flat in DC and this house. Annabel has her trust fund of course, she could buy both the flat and the house without putting a large dent into it, but that's not something that Adam is willing to analyze, let alone accept. Is not that he needs to be "the man of the house", is not a matter of male pride. But it is a matter of pride, and Annabel knows it. He wants a house that will be truly theirs, something that they have built together, with their work and their wits. 

"Annabel, you know we cannot afford both places right now. In a couple of years, when we are both more settled maybe we can start looking, but right now would be imprudent to say the least. You are working so hard to establish yourself and to work towards a future candidacy, and even with my upcoming promotion we still need to be careful with our investments. Becoming a partner is not going to automatically guarantee wealth and my name is not going to be on the door of the building any time soon."

She listens to him speak without interrupting, she watches how he moves, how he talks; her sharp gaze rarely misses anything and he knows that she already has a full rebuttal of all his arguments, this is not a spontaneous moment, this has been rehearsed, and sharpened to a diamond point. She plays with the shell in her hand before she quietly says:

"You know I can afford it."

She doesn't have to say anything else, because it is the truth and he has no argument but his pride against it. 

"I know you can." He is not angry, not yet. This is not the first time they have had a conversation about their disparity in disposable income, and he is not stupid to think that this will be the last one either.

"I know you can, Annabel. But we cannot. If this has to be our house, our life… We cannot afford it, not right now."

She drops the seashell on the sand and wraps her arms around herself, and Adam knows too well that this is not a sign of her being cold, or even her feeling vulnerable, this is her fighting stance. She is determined to win this and Adam is already tired for the fight that will ensue. 

"Annabel…"

She stops him with a single look. "Adam, you know I love how hard you work for everything you have, you are one of the smartest, most hard working persons I have ever met, but you do not seem to understand that the fact that I do have money does not reflect negatively on you. I was fortunate to be born with a modicum of wealth, this is an asset not a handicap. Mama used her family's money to fund her campaign and she is now doing her best to improve the lives of all Americans, and she would not have been able to do so without Grandpa's money."

Adam's temper has been sanded down by years of law school, court rooms and the corridors of power he has found himself walking down for the past ten years. He had thought that all his fire had been banked down by rationality and his required professional camouflage, but his throat burns with words honed to a sharp deadly point, and by the end of this conversation they will both be bleeding. 

"I am pretty sure that buying a holiday home is not exactly the equivalent of improving the lives of all American people now, isn't it? Just tell it how it is, Annabel. You need this house to add another layer to your own persona. You need it to prove to your father's friends that you can and are definitely part of their club, even if you are going to marry some trailer trash from rural Virginia!"

She looks genuinely shocked by his outburst; Annabel knows how to talk to Adam, it has taken her a while, but she knows him and she knows that he can be stubborn, but he is also extremely rational and she has always been able to make him see what it is the right thing to do for both of them. This Adam is unknown to her. This Adam with the quiet, deadly voice and the burning eyes is a complete unknown creature. 

"Adam please do not be unreasonable…"

It's the wrong thing to say, and she realises it immediately but it is already too late.

"I am being perfectly fucking reasonable…" 

Adam doesn't need a magical forest to tell him whose memory is fuelling his vocabulary, but the pain carved by these memories is what he needs right now. He needs something real, something true, he needs words that don't taste like ash in his mouth.

"I am being reasonable because we do not need this house. We do not need it. You do not need it to advance your career, and neither do I. I have made it here by myself. I did this. All of it."

She raises a single eyebrow, too well bred to mock him in any other way, but she is mocking him, that is clear. 

"You made it all by yourself… Good on you. Of course I did nothing. I was just there, standing in your shadow, smiling and waving right? I didn't provide you with support, time and, above all, connections. I was not the one to introduce you to two federal judges and three congressmen. My money and my family name did nothing for the great Adam Parrish, did we? How could we, I mean you are so great at doing things by yourself! Be honest with yourself, Adam. You knew we were helping you, you needed it even, and we were there for you. But you and your high horse could never admit it right? Truth is, you need me…."

Her voice breaks suddenly, but her eyes remain steely, her posture a narrow exclamation point of strength. "I don't need you…but I love you. I love you. Can you say the same?"

Does he love her? Is she right? He has always been so sure, so self aware of his abilities, his worth. Has he been lying to himself for all these years? Has he sold everything he has ever believed in and pretended that it had never happened? 

Does he love her?

She doesn't wait for him to reply.

"Come to me when you have an answer, Adam." She takes off her ring and puts it in his hand. Her fingers are cold, they linger for a second as they close his fist around the ring, then she walks back towards her house.


	4. Chapter 4

Adam doesn't spend the night at the house; when he walks back in it's almost midnight and his overnight bag has been moved to the spare room. He knows that the right thing to do would be to stay and talk to Annabel once they both have had the time to calm down and reflect on what has transpired; but Adam is so tired to do the right thing, the rational thing, the sensible thing. 

What Adam ends up doing makes no sense.

He drives out of Virginia Beach, pushing his car over the speed limit with a recklessness borrowed from his memories; he lets the night air whip his face, stretch the pain of the wind across his mouth with a slash of teeth that is the closest thing to a real smile he has experienced in a long time. He pretends he doesn't know where he is heading, but he takes all the turns that will bring him back until he is confronted with all the landmarks of his youth. The twenty-four hours mini mart where they used to buy those disgusting chips he loved; the long stretch of road flanked by willows, Nino's, Boyd's, St. Agnes; and it's a long montage of memories unlocked mile after mile until he sees the signpost for Singer Falls and he finally stops the car. 

The last time he had driven up the road that leads to the Barns was thirteen years ago, and his memories assault him all at once, like a deck of cards spilling on the floor, each card another memory, another word, another feeling. He feels as if he is awakening from some sort of emotional amnesia and the brute force of all that he had tried to forget is almost too much to bear. His hands shake on the steering wheel, and he knows that if he closes his eyes he will go back to that summer, a cacophony of cicadas in the air, his body burning with heath and desire. 

_ "Home…" _

The voice is perfectly clear this time. The leaves don't need to whisper here, their voice rings clear like a bell and they are happy, a joyful chorus. 

_ "Home, home, home…." _

He shakes his head and taps his ear, but there is no stopping the voices here. The Ley line sings in his veins with the words of a long forgotten song. 

_ "Magician, home… home…" _

He wants to scream at the top of his lungs, but the voice dies in his throat and all he can do is rest his head against the steering wheel, shaken by uncontrollable tremors, the voices in his ear singing with a soft, gentle staccato until he falls into a dreamless sleep. 

Morning comes with the thrills of white throated sparrows and a pastel rich dawn, pinks and yellows tipping the tall willows. Morning also brings the awareness that in less than twelve hours he has split up with his fiancée and driven to the only place in the world that he had vowed to never return, guided not only by the voices in his ears, but also by a need he is not ready to acknowledge yet. He should drive back to DC, he should call Annabel, he should start putting the pieces back together, but he is not sure he knows how. He is not sure he has all the pieces anymore. 

"What the hell am I doing here?" As always the voices in his ears don't reply. He once knew that they were not an oracle, they cannot be interrogated. If he wants answers he will need to ask someone else, he will need to face whatever it is that has awakened the voices. Whoever it is that has been calling him. And ask why. Why now.

He turns the car onto the old beaten road and drives slowly, his heart beating hard and fast, half expecting to see a sleek BMW coming down from the top of the low hill, its engine breaking the quiet of the early morning countryside. There are no cars though, and the only sound is the mournful lowing of cattle grazing across the green pastures. Just before the last bend in the road he sees the sign for "Lynch's Organic Dairy Farm" and he can't help but smile, the memory of so long time ago bringing forward a modicum of sweetness for once, lighting the scene of a sleeping cow and a young boy dreaming curled around a dream. 

"You've fucking done it, you asshole…" 

When the house comes into view it is like stepping back in time, and he almost expects to see Gansey's orange Camaro parked beside the BMW, but neither is there, in their place there is a battered green pick up truck and a brand new, black Chevy Tahoe. He parks the car beside the pick up, turns off the engine and then he has no idea what to do next. What is he even going to tell him? "Oh hi, I know it has been almost fifteen year and last time we saw each other you punched me and I called you a failure… but you know, your magical forest has been calling, so here I am." Adam is pretty sure that it would warrant another punch, at least, but then again is not that he has another explanation, this is it. This is the truth. Or as much truth as he is willing to admit to right now. 

He is still debating how to phrase it, and above all how to face the situation when the front door opens, and a pregnant woman starts walking towards his car. Adam gets out, not wanting to appear even creepier than he already does; he straightens his clothes as best as he can and approaches her trying to look like a normal guy, and not like a deranged person who hears voices from a magical forest and is here to ask what the aforementioned forest wants. 

"May I help you?" Her voice is low and musical, speaking of somewhere out west. Adam smiles his best "I am a successful lawyer" smile and holds out his hand. 

"Good morning ma'am, my name is Adam Parrish, I was wondering if I could speak with Mr. Lynch… We used to… we used to go to school together at Aglionby Academy." 

The woman smiles without any affectation, her eyes large and hazel behind the glasses. 

"Oh dear! I will never get used to the southerner gentleman's charm! That's how I got into this state!" She pats her belly and holds out her hand to shake Adam's. 

"Francesca Lynch, but please call me Fran. I thought I had met all of my husbands' school friends, but I would have remembered you if we had met. Then again… pregnant brain and all as they say… Matthew is out in the fields, mending fences, it's a never ending job on the farm."

She is giving him a way out, if he keeps quiet he can delay the confrontation and just have a pleasantly simple conversation with a lovely woman, but he is so tired, physically and emotionally, and he is here. He is here after so many years and if he is here it needs to mean something, he needs to result in something. 

"Mrs. Lynch… Francesca, I mean Fran… I wasn't in school with Matthew… I mean we did both go to Aglionby, but he was a couple of grades below me… I was in school with Ronan."

And there is it. He has said it. And the world has not ended. It was not the magic word to unlock the spell, or to break a curse. Ronan is just a name, just a name. So how is it that he can taste the word in his mouth? How is it that it still tastes sweet and tart and burning? 

She stops on her way to the front door and turns to look at Adam, her eyes sharp now, the softness of her smile slowly disappearing. 

"You were in school with Ronan? Oh… " The smile is all but gone when she steps closer, she folds her arms across her chest and regards him for a long moment.

"Jesus… you are him! You are him! Ronan never said your name, and Matthew never mentioned you and Declan calls you… the Harvard guy, but you are him. I have to say it, I was not expecting a shark to look so handsome and to be so polite… But then again, maybe this is part of your charm. "

Adam almost smiles, almost. The Lynch brothers may fight and have impossibly different lives and dispositions, but one thing they are is loyal to one another, and apparently the loyalty extends to newly acquired members of the Lynch tribe. He wants to protest, to say that he is not the villain in the story that was his and Ronan's relationship, but wasn't he? He did break up with Ronan, he did call him a failure, he did delete the history of the two of them in a single swipe. One conversation on the steps of the Humanities building and that was it. Ronan was no more. No more dreams, no more stories, no more impossibly bright nights spent together. No more. 

_ "Jesus… you are… God, you are like a yoke around my neck! I haven't left Henrietta and my shitty family to be tied down again into mediocrity. I am working hard to make something of my life, what are you doing? Nothing, absolutely nothing. Trying to wake a dream forest and driving your BMW up and down country roads. What the fuck is that? I am not going to be a failure, Ronan. Not like… you." _

This is the first time in almost fifteen years that he has allowed himself to think about that night, and the cruelty of his words can only in part be attributed to his youth, and the callousness born of strife; the rest was all him, the rest was his true nature. He was the villain. 

He was the villain and this was a mistake. This is not going to be his redeeming arc, he has not come here with the intent of apologising or explaining, even this trip is all about him. Him and his need to solve the problem that is his long lost boyfriend's magical forest, and the fact that apparently both the magic and the ex boyfriend are still capable of making him act irrationally. 

Fran is still looking at him, hopefully unaware that he has gone through an emotional breakdown and breakthrough all in the space of two minutes.

"I am sorry to have bothered you… I will leave now. Please give my regards to Matthew and… everyone else."

She stops him by putting a hand on his arm, and when she looks at him the softness is back and her mouth is curled into a small, mocking smile. 

"God, you guys… Such drama queens. The dramatic must be part of the southerner man DNA, I swear we just don't have time for these kinds of shenanigans in California. With the fires, earthquakes and fucking Hollywood, we do not need any more drama. Come on, come inside. Matthew will be down for a bite to eat in a short while and you can have a cup of coffee. It looks like you need one."

He should protest, he should leave, he should have never had come here, but he follows her inside, lured by the promise of coffee and the echo of a deep, familiar voice.

_ "Come in, you loser." _

He crosses the threshold and the first thing he notices is that the house has changed. The main living room area looks larger, with big French windows that overlook the fields, and the old leather couch has been replaced by a large, three seater covered in colorful fabric. 

It's jarring. He knows it's stupid to expect that everything was going to be the same, but his memories have preserved his house like a fly in embers, and the reality of its changes is yet another sign of what he has left behind, of all the things that the had closed inside a box, but has been unable to get rid of completely. 

Fran guides him to the brightly lit kitchen, the room is anchored by the large Aga stove in the corner and there are copper pans hanging from the ceiling in the middle of the large dining island. It's a beautiful room, it's a family room, but it's not the the place where Ronan had kissed him goodbye the day he had left for Harvard, it's not the place where he had spent his first happy Christmas in many years, it's not the place where he had thought Opal how to read time. That place is gone. That time is gone, and all of a sudden the weight of that realisation leaves him drained and hollow. 

"Please sit down."

Fran's voice brings him back to the present, and he sits down, trying desperately not to look like he is about to break down at any moment. Fran pours the coffee and looks at him curiously, her initial, loyally bound disdain in realising that he was the infamous Adam Parrish, seems to have disappeared, but she looks worried, concerned almost, and Adam is not sure if she is concerned about him or about what Matthew's reaction in seeing him is going to be. Adam doesn't have too long to dwell on the question, because he has barely taken two sips of the coffee before the door opens and, to his horror, Matthew is followed in by Declan and an absurdly gorgeous woman. 

"What is he doing here?"

Adam stands up automatically, ingrained politeness commanding him to greet the new arrivals, starting with the woman. He extends his hands and she shakes it, her eyes cat-like and twice as sharp. 

"Adam Parrish, pleased to meet you."

Her voice, when she replies, is smooth and ever so slightly mocking.

"Enchanted. Cordelia Weintropp-Lynch"

Matthew is telegraphing his displeasure in his stiff posture and the clenched fists at his side, but Declan and his wife are as still as statues, assessing the situation from every angle. Adam remembers that Ronan used to compare his older brother to a snake oil salesman, and if Adam remembers correctly Declan is now working for the governor of Virginia in some non disclosed capacity, something that is as prestigious as it is shady. 

"Matty, love. Sit down. Shall we all sit down? Mr. Parrish is our guest, show some of that southern hospitality you keep banging all about, will you?"

Declan and his wife sit down, but Matthew stays still, gripping the edge of the chair until Adam sits back down and Fran all but pushes her husband onto the chair.

"Well, this is awkward…"

Fran is still trying to defuse the tension, something that, Adam is sure, she had to learn pretty quickly having to deal with the three Lynch brothers. He hates that he has put her in such a situation and he knows that the best thing to do is to make his exit a quick one. 

"I am sorry I intruded into your lives unannounced today, I realise now it was very inconsiderate of me. I simply was driving back to DC after visiting a friend and took a small detour and thought about visiting, but I should have called first. My sincerest apologies."

Adam stands up with the intention to make his way out but Declan stops him.

"Well that fancy degree from Harvard has clearly given you the vocabulary to lie well, but that was absolute bullshit and we all know it. There is only one thing that would drag you back to this place. There is only one person. And I wonder why, considering the way you treated him. Ronan is not the easiest person to love, I know full well, but I also knew who you truly were from the start and I did tell Ronan. I did tell him that you would walk all over everyone and anyone to get where you wanted to be. But he didn't listen of course, and you did. You walked all over him. And now you are back, after all these years and you are here "to visit an old friend". Please. Just tell us what you want and then leave. Leave and please do not come visiting again." 

Matthew clearly wants to say his piece as well, but his wife stops him by putting her hand over his, a silent conversation concentrated in a singular, intimate gesture. 

What is Adam to say to Declan's accusations? As harsh as they are they are not far from the truth, they are actually really close to the truth, as hard as it is for Adam to admit it. 

He knows he has hurt Ronan, God he knows. He knew it then and he knows it now, but he still did it and now here he is, called back by a long lost magical forest and the memories of the first person who truly loved him for who he was. What type of justifications can he give to these people? To Ronan's brothers? To his family who clearly loves him and is trying to shield him? 

The only thing he has to offer is the truth, and for the first time in what feels like years, is what he gives them.

"Cabeswater."

Matthew is the only one to visibly react, having always been unable to have any kind of poker face. Declan remains impassible, but both his wife and Fran don't seem confused, or alarmed, so they are clearly aware, Adam is not sure to what degree, of the Lynch's family secret, of Ronan's gift.

"What about Cabeswater?" Declan will never voluntarily offer information, he will always try to learn an opponent's weaknesses and needs before offering anything of his own. Adam is familiar with this dance; it's something he has engaged in every day for the past ten year at McCabe, Arland & Grey.

"Just before Christmas…" Adam takes a deep breath, trying to articulate something that, in its essence, it's elemental magic, something he had decided to forego many years ago. He tries again but it's as if the armour provided to him by his eloquence has been destroyed by the sheer force of this place and the memories that it has awoken inside him. All it's left is the bare bones of his longings and his fears.

"I've started hearing the forest. It's calling me. It still recognises me as its magician. I don't know why. I don't know why now. I- things are just…" He stops, frustrated by the fact that he almost sounds like the boy he used to be, always trying to justify his reason for living, for being, for doing. The only one who never asked him to be anything but who he was was Ronan. And even that was not enough. It was not enough because it did not make sense to Adam, why, why was Ronan so accepting? Why was he enough for Ronan, while he had not been enough for anyone and anything else?

"Adam." Matthew's voice surprises him, gone is the belligerent rage and Adam can hear a deeper echo of the young boy who used to laugh so openly and freely, the brother who Ronan loved so fiercely.

"Adam, no one is taking care of Cabeswater… Ronan never rebuilt it. He… has left. He left the States five years ago. I don't know what you are hearing, but it cannot be Cabeswater. He cannot be Ronan." 

Cabeswater is gone. 

Ronan is gone.

Adam looks at the people around the table and they are all strangers. He has no place here. He has forfeited the right the night he broke Ronan's heart. 

There is nothing left. 

The voices were lies. The voices were his hopes, his fears, and his desires. 

There is nothing left.

He leaves quietly. 


	5. Chapter 5

The drive back from the Lynch family farm is a quiet one, he is determined to go back to DC, to forget all about what has transpired in the past twenty-four hours, to reset his life to before a no longer existing magical forest started manifesting in his mind.

_ "Magician…" _

The voices in his ear sing with a soft sadness and Adam wants to scream as loud as he can, but he knows that he cannot silence them, he knows they are not a siren call from his long lost love, they are something inside himself that is trying to come out, that is trying to wake something that he thought was long gone, if it ever existed at all.

_ "Incantator…" _

He stops haphazardly by the side of the road and steps out of the car; his body is shaking with lack of sleep and the awakening of something that he had ignored for over a decade. Is not Ronan, or better, is not only Ronan; they had done this together, they had worked together, entwined their lives and their hearts to a form of elemental magic that is somehow calling him back. 

_ "Incantator… Magician… " _

He doesn't know what to think anymore, the hyper rational part of his brain is telling him that he could be experiencing a mental breakdown caused by stress and overwork, but he has witnessed magic at work. He had witnessed his friend dying with a kiss and being brought back to life by his sacrifice and the dreams woven into Ronan's core. He has seen Cabeswater, the demon trying to destroy it, to destroy him and Ronan, and he cannot dismiss that whatever he is hearing, even if it's not Ronan's dream forest, is not real, is not asking him for something, telling him something. 

He needs answers, but he knows he will not find them by the side of the road, or back in DC. Whatever this is it does not belong in the city; it's something much older, much darker, something born out of blood and Virginia's red dirt. 

He gets back in the car and drives to the only place where he knows he will be able to get some answers, or at least he hopes so.

300 Fox Way looks exactly the same as it did when he first saw it fifteen years ago. It's like it lives inside a pocket of unmoved time, turning seasons around and around in a loop without moving through the convention of time like everything else. He parks by the curbside and, even before he has a chance to prepare himself, the door opens and Orla appears on the door, herself barely touched by time, still larger than life, still outrageously bold in her appearance.

"Look what the cat has dragged back into town…"

She turns back, into the black void of the doorway and Adam can hear her calling:

"Calla, Maura! He's here. I told you he was coming today."

This house was the closest thing to a home he had ever known before The Barns (before Ronan), and being here brings back an onslaught of feelings he can barely process, but the most familiar is shame. Shame for not having kept in contact with any of the women in the house, not even Blue. After his breakup with Ronan he had cut ties with everyone else. Gansey had tried, stubborn and determined to never let go of the things and people he loved, but Adam had always been ruthless, and he had made sure that everything and anything that had connected him to Ronan and his past was excised from his life with surgical precision. 

When he gets to the door he is greeted by the three women and he has the distinct feeling that his worth is about to be tested, that they are guardians to a secret he once was part of, but he has willingly let go of.

Would Persephone be disappointed by his choices? By what he has done, or better not done in all these years? He doesn't have the time to dwell on it, as he is ushered into the darkened hallway of the house, and once again feels and he is passing through a threshold that is much, much more than the physical reality they are occupying. 

"Let me look at you, Adam."

Maura is the first one to speak, her voice kind just as he remembered. There is no condemnation in her eyes, only warmth and the waves of shame hit him again, painting his cheekbones and the hollow of his throat red. She embraces him so very gently, as if she is scared that he may disappear like smoke, like a vision in a bowl of water.

He hugs her back awkwardly, he is so much taller than she is that he cannot help but wonder if she had always been this small, or if, in his memories, she had been so much bigger, always projecting an aura of confidence in herself and her gift.

"Welcome back, Adam."

He doesn't deserve this welcoming kindness, the shame threatens to swallow him and he feels so young all of a sudden, as if he is seventeen again, as if all the years that have passed have been spooled back by her embrace. 

"Took him long enough." Calla was always the most direct of the 300 Fox Way psychics, but her words are not unkind, just matter of fact.

Maura releases him from her embrace and takes his hand, walking him towards the kitchen.

"You can't speed these things up, Calla. You should know this. Things need to happen at the right time and this is Adam's time." 

Calla looks at Maura with a raised eyebrow, but doesn't say anything and sits across the table, Orla at her back, her nails painted a nauseating shade of pink. The three women look at him and he has no doubt that they are able to see things he has yet to admit to himself. It should be unnerving, but for once, it is almost a relief to be known, to be seen in all his entirety. These women used to know him, they used to know what his hands were able to do, what the core of his own self could see across the ley line.

"Drink the tea, Adam." Maura pours him a cup of something dark and smelling vaguely of dirt and pushes it towards him. "Drink it and then you can tell me why you are here."

"I thought you were the psychic." He cannot help himself, but she doesn't say a word, unlike Orla who shoots back "The sass on this one! I'm gonna charge him double. Treble!"

Adam looks at the three women again, each one the door to a different set of questions, and he knows that they see him, the true core of him, the one that has been hearing the call of magic once more.

He drinks the tea, the warmth of it making up for the foul taste, and he starts telling them what has been going on since Christmas, what has driven him back to Virginia, to The Barns, to them. Everything spills out of him in a rush, words stumbling upon one another, gracelessly and filled with too many emotions that it is impossible for him to untangle a single thread, making him feel everything all at once.

"I feel as if I am completely untethered. I have always been so sure of who I was and what I wanted and now I feel as if I have lost the footing in my own life. I came here because I thought… I thought Cabeswater was calling me." He takes a deep breath and lets another truth carve a new furrow across the barren landscape of his memories. "I thought Ronan was calling me."

Calla fingers the rim of his empty cup, her index finger runs three times clockwise and three times anticlockwise before saying: "The snake has shed his skin." 

Adam looks up at her, but Calla doesn't offer him any more information, he is sure it's another thing that he will have to figure out by himself. 

Maura looks at him with the same kindness he bestowed on him the first time Blue had taken him home. "We all change our skins and colours through our own lives. We all change part of ourselves, but not our true self. That we cannot change, we cannot ignore it. You cannot ignore it, Adam."

Calla puts a bowl of water in front of him and hands him a deck of cards. 

"Magician." she said, not an ounce of mocking in her voice. It's like an investiture, an official recognition, but he still feels like a fraud. He still feels as if the only magic he has ever experienced was because of Ronan. The magic was never his own, he borrowed it (his mind can't help but whisper:  _ stole it _ ), he took it almost by force with the violence of his sacrifice.

"I am not sure I can do this… I am not sure I can. It has been so long, and Cabeswater is gone, Ronan is gone."

He can see Orla bristling again, but Maura stops her with a single look. 

"Adam, listen to me. There is a reason why you are here, why you have been called back here. You never believed that you were capable of doing this, that you didn't need Cabeswater to wield your magic. I'm not sure you ever wanted to believe it, because it wasn't something quantifiable, because you could not see the usefulness of it within the plans you had drawn for yourself. But Persephone did believe in you. " Maura stops briefly, her sorrow for losing Persephone still a resonant note in her voice.

"Persephone knew who you were. I think you have tried to convince yourself that you are something you are not for so long, that you cannot find your real self any longer. That's why your inner core has been calling you."

And as if summoned by Maura's words his ears are filled by the rustling of leaves calling his name.

_ "Magician…" _

He looks at the three women, Maura to the South, Orla and Calla to the East and West, leaving him on the North cardinal point. 

"Find yourself, magician."

He is frustrated by her lack of clarity, but he knows that being a psychic does not equal to being able to provide a clean answer. Looking into what is happening is harder than looking for what will happen in the future. The tree women stand still, modern day Sybils standing guard to a yet untold prophecy. He picks the deck and pulls out four cards.

Death.

The moon.

The tower.

The lovers.

He looks into the bowl of water and at first all he can see is his own reflection. He is too grounded to the present, to the physical things that surround him, from the uncomfortable chair he is sitting on to the loud ticking clock on the kitchen wall. At first it's like trying to pry a bolted door open with a pencil, and every attempt splinters his resolve in more pieces, until there is nothing left but shavings of graphite, but then something inside him shifts and coalesces, and he is scrying.

The room disappears around him, and he is finally able to see again. 

_ The ocean is a moving lung of freezing water.  _

_ The wind is a call of lonely beauty moving like a lover among hills covered in heather. _

_ The soil is old, dark with the blood of many legends. _

_ His name resonates like a church bell. Like a sacrament. _

_ Adam, Adam, Adam... _

When he comes back to himself Maura, Calla and Orla have not moved, solid in their presence, tree cardinal points anchoring him back to the present, and he feels their power and the connection like a physical thing, stretching around him, embracing him.

He looks around the kitchen and for a moment he is sure he can see Persephone sitting in the corner, knitting needles in her hands, hair pale like bleached wheat. 

"You are okay, Adam. Don't stand up yet."

He is pretty sure Maura is speaking to him, but the voice comes through as if underwater, almost drowned by the loud beating of his heart; it feels as if his blood is moving through his body at double speed.

They hand him another cup of tea and he is too weak to refuse it, and he drinks it slowly, while the three women keep vigil over him. He had forgotten how scrying left him weak and hyper aware at the same time. His whole body is thrumming, alive, real. 

"Welcome back, magician." Maura says again.

He wants to ask what they mean by that, but his body already knows. He fits in his body for the first time in thirteen years, as if his bones have reset after a break, healed, fragile but whole.

They don't ask him what he has seen, they just stand by him, until the roar of his blood has receded. 

The phone rings somewhere in the house and Calla moves to answer it, dropping a quick kiss to his cheek. "Don't you dare forget again." she tells him, but her voice is soft, fond. 

"He won't…" Orla echoes her, and then she leaves him alone with Maura. 

He has found himself once more, but of course this does not solve all his problems. He still has a job, there is still Annabel, there are still years and years spent working hard to get everything he had always been denied when he was a child. These things have not disappeared. His fears about not being enough have not gone away. 

"What do I do now?" 

Maura stands up and retrieves a postcard pinned to the fridge, she slides it across the table and the picture on the front is of a ragged shoreline, the bluest sky dotted with seagulls. He turns it over and in Ronan's weirdly neat handwriting is written:

"To the witches of Fox Way, greetings from Ireland. The Snake."

  
  



	6. Chapter 6

The size of the Donegal airport matches the aircraft he had boarded in Dublin, small and semi deserted in early March, but the first thing that hits Adam is not the lack of people or amenities, it is the incredibly loud hum of the ley line. What had been a barely there buzz in Dublin, here it's a loud crescendo of seemingly disconnected, and yet harmonious, notes. 

It is so overwhelming that he feels dizzy, his steps faltering so much that he finds himself on the receiving end of several concerned looks from few of the other passengers disembarking with him. 

When he had booked his flights to Ireland he had almost been in a trance, still imbued with all the power shared at Fox Way he had driven back to DC too fast, desperate to move, to do something. Maura had given him the postcard and, once back in his apartment, he had checked the post mark and found out that it was out of a tiny village in the northern county of Donegal in Ireland. He had almost laughed, of course Ronan had moved to the most remote place he could find, some place with nothing but green hills and the roar of the ocean.

He had researched the place, looked at the few pictures he had found online and wondered what type of life Ronan had managed to build for himself there. Was he happy? Was he alone? Did he find someone? Adam had stopped these thoughts with his practiced, brutal efficiency. He told himself he had no right to think that way, but the truth was that these thoughts were too dangerous, they were too real. What if Ronan was not alone? Did he want him to be with someone? Did he want to be that someone again? 

Adam had sat on his floor with a packed suitcase and too many thoughts in his head. He had wanted to scry again, but his power, or whatever was inside him was too fragile still, he was still too fragile, too scared of what he was going to see. So he had stayed like that until his alarm had gone off at five, and then, as if awakened by a toll bell, he had gotten dressed and had taken the train back to his office to tell his boss that, on the verge of a life changing career advancement, he was going to take a two weeks holiday. 

His sudden decision had raised more than one eyebrow, but, by law, they could not refuse him, not after he had accumulated so many vacation days.

Arlan had been supportive, but he had made it clear that his sudden holiday request was not exactly the smartest move at that precise time, and Adam had been well aware of the truth in that statement. He had taken him four attempts to finally pack his suitcase, and even more to master the courage to ask for the holiday, but something had awakened inside him and he could no longer ignore it. He didn't want to ignore it. 

On his way to the airport his mobile had rang, Annabel's name had flashed on the screen, but he had let the call go to voicemail, a cowardly move he had not been proud of, but how was he supposed to explain to her that he was flying across the world to chase the memory of his first love after having had a vision of it? 

Almost fifteen hours and two flights later he still has no words for her, the battery on his phone is almost empty and when it rings again, he turns it off shoving it inside his carry on bag. The ley line hums louder and louder, and he feels like a tuning fork, resonating at the same frequency as the energy buried deep within the land. 

He has to take several deep breaths before he is able to make his way to the rental car's desk, before he is able to talk to the pretty girl behind the counter without sounding and looking like a madman. 

Half an hour later he is following the GPS and driving to Gleann Cholm Cille, the tiny hamlet from where Ronan has sent the postcard; he doesn't have any other details, but considering that, according to Wikipedia, Gleann Cholm Cille has less than three hundreds inhabitants, he is pretty sure he will be able to find a six feet tall, foul mouthed, American man. 

Driving on the other side of the road is jarring at first, but he soon gets the hang of it, it helps that the road is almost deserted, something that allows him to tune himself with the ley line without getting overwhelmed. He can feel the undercurrent of it inside himself, but he soon realises that it is everywhere around him. It's in the whispered hush of the grass, the gruff song of the ocean, the stilled silence of the sky. It's beautiful in the way that all ancient things are, beautiful in its strangeness, in its dangerous, dark voice.

_ "Draíodóir…" _

Intellectually he doesn't understand the language, but his body can translate it, it can spell it on his skin, like a kiss, like a lover. 

"Magician…"

The ley line is calling him, even so far away from Henrietta, from The Barns, from all his memories. The ley line still recognises him, and he can still communicate with it. 

He does not know in what capacity this ley line needs him, its strength is much more far reaching than anything he has ever experienced in Virginia, and he is not sure what he could do here, but for now the line of power running deep within the soil is simply happy for his presence.

He drives along the narrow, winding road and the nature around him is glorious in the first blooms of spring. The grass is a sea of emerald, dotted with the pale pink of crocuses, he can smell the wet soil and the bitter saltiness of the ocean and it's easy to see why Ronan has chosen such a place to start over.

Ronan had always been a wild creature, he hated the city, the crowds of people making it impossible for him to think, to breathe. He was only truly free in the silence of his ancestral home, or screaming above the deafening roar of a sport car. 

Ronan who used to dream fireflies and silver stags. Ronan who dreamt of light, Ronan who had the softest heart and the foulest mouth. Ronan belonged here, in this beautifully remote place.

_ "I cannot take you anywhere, I swear you're like a damn, feral cat, Lynch…" _

_ "Meow…" _

_ "Jesus, I am in love with an idiot."  _

The memory hits him all at once. 

He had not meant to blurt it out like that, but the words had been simmering inside him for weeks. He had rehearsed them, tasted them in his mouth like a ripe fruit, and he had wanted to tell them well, to be precise in his delivery, but Ronan had been silly and soft and the words had just come out. Simple, like taking a breath.

Adam remembers it perfectly. The look of wonder in Ronan's eyes. The softness of his expression and the way he had stared at him like he was crazy, and how he had left without saying another word.

He had taken Ronan two weeks to say it back, he had taken him two weeks to come back to Adam's room at night, soaking wet, shaking in his too thin t-shirt and the first thing he had said when Adam had open the door had been:

_ "Meow." _

Adam had wanted to still be mad at him, but he had laughed instead, he had laughed at the idiocy of that beautiful boy, and he had hugged him hard, feeling the heath under the chilled skin. And they had kissed on the threshold, and they had kissed and kissed until Ronan had brushed his lips against Adam's neck and whispered the words. And it had sounded like a prayer, like an incantation.

_ "I love you too, Parrish." _

He keeps driving, but the pain is as intense as the beauty of the memory.

He had so much once.

The closer he gets to the village, the more intense his memories get. Each one brings one more, from the day that they had spent painting fences under the sun, to the night they had lit a fire on the outer edges of the The Barns, and Opal had slept with her head on his lap and Ronan had held his hand all night, a fist clasped against his chest. Each memory is a new stitch ripped off his heart and he is scared he is going to choke on his own blood. 

"Please stop. Please, please stop."

The ley line seems to understand him regardless of the language they speak, but the memories keep rolling in, a new one for each twist and turn of the road. 

_ "So, I was wondering, you know, if you wanted, I mean is not that we have to… I would never ask you if you didn't want to.."  _ Adam had waited, but the ellipses were getting longer and Ronan was nowhere close to making any sense, so he had stopped him.

_ "Lynch, I have no idea what you are trying to say. Regroup. Make it simple" _

Ronan had taken a deep breath and had looked at him, arms crossed protectively over his torso. 

_ "You wanna have sex? With me?"  _ But before Adam had had a chance to reply Ronan had walked out of the house, muttering  _ "Nevermind, pretend this never happened. I'm gonna go and drown myself in the well out back…"  _

They had spent the night outside, Adam had caught up with Ronan and told him that, yes, yes he wanted to have sex, and yes, he wanted to have sex with Ronan and not some rando. Ronan had punched him in the arm and they had laughed together, the summer night air a lulling drug of drowsy heath. 

When he finally reaches the edges of the village and sees the sign for Gleann Cholm Cille he stops the car, he calls at the power inside of him and it is so easy for the ley line to respond it is almost scary. 

_ "Ceannródaí…" _

"Yes. Yes, the dreamer. The dreamer."

He waits, eyes closed, but the voice he hears next is of a man, and when he opens his eyes the first thing he sees is a pair of suspicious eyes framed by a weathered, mustached face. 

"Are you lost, son?"

Adam looks at the man wondering for a moment if he is real, or if it's something called up by the power of the ley line, but the look of diffident concern in the man's eyes is very much human, and Adam, in his best lawyer's voice, says: "Good afternoon Sir, I am not lost, thank you. But I would be very grateful if you could tell me if you know where Ronan Lynch lives." 

The man's look is no less diffident after Adam's speech, but he doesn't call for help, or leave altogether, so Adam counts it as a win and tries again, donning his confident, courtroom smile. 

"We are old friends, you see. We went to school together in the States, we are both from Virginia, you know? Not far from Washington DC."

The guy's look goes from diffident to right down hostile in a matter of seconds and before Adam can add anything else, he tells him "No need for the life story, son. And if you're here to buy his place for some sort of holiday resort or some shite like that, you better go back to where you're from, cause Ronan ain't selling his place to you, or no-one else."

The man's apparent loyalty to Ronan is not surprising. Ronan Lynch has always had the ability to inspire absolute devotion regardless of his terrible attitude and ever more terrible mouth. Gansey had been their king somehow, but Ronan was the knight soldiers would plead fealty to. Hadn't Adam done the same? Ronan who appeared to embody every cliché of the spoiled, rich boy Adam hated, and was instead some sort of bad tempered Galahad, with the heart of a saint and the mouth of a sinner. And Adam had not only trusted him, but loved him. 

God, he had loved him. 

The man makes to move away, but Adam steps out of the car and stops him again. 

"Sir, please… I am not here to buy his place, I am here to see him. We haven't spoken in many years, I just want… need to talk to him, please." 

The man doesn't seem softened by his pleas but doesn't leave straight away, instead he crosses his arms across his chest and looks Adam up and down as if searching for something that can  somehow make him trustworthy enough to warrant an answer to Adam's question. 

"COLM! Have you decided to terrorise another tourist? What did this one do?"

Both Adam and the man now identified as Colm turn to look at a woman walking out of the tiny post office slash convenience store. 

"Catriona, mind your own business for once."

She ignores him completely and walks straight to Adam holding out her hand. 

"Welcome to Gleann Cholm Cille, please ignore Colm. We all do. I'm Catriona Logan, I own the shop over there."

Adam shakes her hand, but Colm doesn't appear too happy about the intrusion and he starts speaking quickly in Irish, his voice a hiss of annoyance. Unlike when the ley line speaks to him Adam doesn't understand what they are saying, but he is pretty sure he gets the gist of it by the way Colm points at him with an accusatory finger and by the way he keeps dropping Ronan's name into the conversation. Catriona lets go of his hand and her and Colm completely ignore him in favour of bickering among themselves. He makes the decision to just go back in the car and drive away, after all how hard would it be to spot Ronan in such a small place? Before he can do anything Catriona starts speaking in English again and Colm looks slightly chastised if still a bit disgruntled. 

"I'm sorry about that, I promise we are not all like Colm here. He is just a bit weary of strangers. We had some people trying to buy land around here and try to turn the place into some sort of tourist resort or holiday home for rich folks, and Colm is worried you're one of them, but I don't think you are. For starters if you were, you would be driving a better car than a Ford Fiesta." She smiles broadly, and her face lit up with a road map of laugh lines that speaks of a life well lived. 

"Ronan lives just outside the village, as you can see this is not a metropolis, so just drive through the main road here and just turn left at the church, and his place is half a mile on your left. Just don't be surprised if he is not happy to see you. He is rarely happy to see anyone, not the most social our Ronan." 

Our Ronan. Adam is not surprised that these people have clearly adopted Ronan as one of their own, these are people used to living on the edge of a remote place, isolated, reliant on one another, and therefore loyal and steadfast. These are Ronan's people. So was he once. But so many years have passed, so much hurt. Will Ronan even want to see him? 

He thanks Catriona and Colm, who still looks upset by the whole exchange, and then gets back in his car; by the time it turns at the church it starts to rain, a fine drizzle that turns everything silver in the fading light of dusk. The cottage appears after one last sharp turn; a white-washed structure with exposed bricks and a thatched roof, it stands among the darkening hills and the roar of the ocean below, like a solitary beacon in the fading light. 

Adam parks the car slightly far off the way and starts walking towards the house, he is approaching a low wooded gate when he spots them. 

Emerging through the mist a man and a large dog walk together, Adam can only make out their silhouettes from a distance, but he'd recognise Ronan's demeanor anywhere, the prideful way of his walk, the long lines of his legs, the slope of his shoulders, the way his cheekbones seems to have been sharpened by steel. 

The large wolfhound starts galloping towards the gate, the shaggy fur matted by the drizzling rain, dark eyes trained on Adam; Ronan whistles loudly and the dog stops just a few feet away from the fence, ears alerted to any other call from his master. When Adam can finally see Ronan's face is like a polaroid developing through time, gone is the shaved head, and instead his hair is a halo of wet, dark curls, gone is the skinny boy replaced by a man who clearly knows hard work, but the eyes are the same, bright, surgically blue, feverish shimmering in the dying light of the day. 

"This is private property, kindly fuck off."

Ronan's voice is deeper but has still the same barbed quality, the same dark note. 

The ley line sings with it, a long, whispered sigh:

_ "Ceannródaí…" _

"Hi Ronan." 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Gleann Cholm Cille](https://www.gleanncholmcille.ie/)  
> Draíodóir = Magician [Translation here](https://www.focloir.ie/en/dictionary/ei/magician)  
> Ceannródaí = Dreamer [Translation here](https://www.focloir.ie/en/dictionary/ei/dreamer)


	7. Chapter 7

Adam's words are left suspended in the wet, impending darkness of the evening, Ronan's only reply is a quick whistle to call his dog to his side. The wolfhound casts a quick look at Adam before trotting back to his master, moving through the mist like a silvery shadow. 

Ronan pets the large head with careful fingers, scratching it behind the ears, running his knuckles over the long, shaggy muzzle. 

"There aren't many wolves around here, but wolfhounds are still bred to hunt them.  _ Taise _ here is no exception. She is a hunter, she will defend this place, she will defend me…"

Adam's surprise is more at Ronan's tone than at his not so veiled threat. He was expecting Ronan to be furious, to tell him to go to hell in his usual profanity-laced way, he was expecting a lot of things, but he was not expecting to see the fear in Ronan's eyes, or to hear it in his words. 

Adam knows he has hurt Ronan, what he had told him that day at Harvard had been rehearsed for days for maximum effect, he had needed to break things off and he had done so with the calculated efficiency of a surgeon. What he had not rehearsed had been his cruelty; that had been something that had seeped through his speech like a poisonous miasma, something that, ashamed as he is of it, he had enjoyed in that moment. He had relished in knowing that he was his own man once again, that he did not need Ronan to make it through, that he did not need to be shackled by magic, by his poor background, by the suffocating feeling that he felt each time Ronan breathed more love into his lungs, into his heart. His cruelty was entirely his own; born out of necessity to survive. 

He had been cruel on purpose and instead of looking at him with hatred, Ronan was now looking at him with fear. Was he scared that Adam was here to hurt him again? Was Adam able to hurt him again? Did he want to?  Adam is horrified by the realisation, and he wants to say that he would never hurt Ronan, that he couldn't, but he already has, and he had done it with intent.

"Ronan, can we talk? Please?"

The dog,  _ Taise _ Ronan had called her, pricks her ears and emits a low, warning growl. Ronan says something quick in Irish and the dog quiets, but Ronan doesn't move from her side. His hair is now curling at the nape, with soft, dark ribbons tumbling over his forehead. Ronan had been a sharp, awkwardly handsome teenager, but, as a man, there is a dark, dangerous beauty to him, something that calls at Adam's own core. 

_ "Gortaithe…" _

The ley line surges inside him and he can feel the word in his own bones, the ache of it, the absolute truth of it. It breaks Ronan's stillness as he feels it too and he moves so quickly that Adam has barely time to move away from the gate before Ronan and his dog barge through. Ronan had always been fearful of people discovering his true feelings, his true heart, and here is Adam, crashing into his life again, exposing his heart all over again. 

"I'm sorry Ronan. It's the ley line, I cannot control it… It's too strong here."

Ronan is almost at his door, but he turns around, emotions written all over his face, fear, anger, longing. "Leave. I need you to leave now. Whatever you came here to do or say I don't want to hear it. You left. You had no problem staying gone all this time. Just go back to wherever you've been hiding for the past twelve years. Just leave, or I swear to God I'll fucking sic  _ Taise _ on you."

The loud banging of the door scares a couple of nearby birds and they take flight in the now dark sky, swift winged bullets echoing in the silence. Adam stands there for a while, but no light is turned on inside the small cottage and everything remains eerily still, while darkness falls around him like a blanket. 

Adam makes his way back to the village, the ley line humming with a mournful note in his head, filling the empty spaces inside his heart. 

_ "Dóchas…" _

Adam parks outside the small hotel the girl at the car rental had recommended and when he goes to see if they have an available room he is surprised to see the same woman he had met earlier behind the counter. 

She gives him the same open smile and wastes no time in asking about Ronan, as if to make sure that Ronan is okay and that she will be able to reassure Colm later on. 

Adam is not really inclined in becoming the talk of the town, but in a place so small he is pretty sure he already is, if nothing else because there are three teenagers openly loitering in the lobby and they are clearly not there to book a room.

"I found the house, thank you. I- we didn't talk for very long."

Her laughter is a resounding one and the three kids walk closer, dropping the last pretense of indifference. Catriona gives them a dirty look but they are undeterred and the youngest of them, a girl that cannot be older than thirteen, is the first one to speak. 

"Ronan doesn't like to talk. If you were really his friend you'd know." Her look is not only accusatory, but almost threatening and she reminds him so much of Opal that he cannot help but wonder if she is something equally feral and magical. 

He is about to reply, but her companions start asking questions as well, where is he from, when did he meet Ronan, what does he really want, their words tripping over one another.

All he wants is to go to his room and to sleep off all his tired sadness and to regroup, but it looks like the locals have already embarked in a crusade to defend Ronan and he is too tired to even try to defend himself, and, after all, aren't they right? He has travelled thousands of miles for something that he had killed many years ago, what was he expecting to find? 

"Enough!"

Catriona finally manages to silence the group and they look grumpy, but chastised. 

"Don't make me ban you from the shop and the hotel guys, now go home before your ma' come out to look for you with the birch."

The three teenagers make their way out of the hotel, but the girl turns around to give Adam another dirty look.

"Ronan… he has the horses to look after. He can't leave." She trusts her chin forward, trying to look bolder: "He won't leave. Not even for you."

Adam watches her leave and his mind eye is easier to replace her with the fawn girl of Ronan's dream, with the closest thing he had ever had to a little sister. Is she with Ronan? Did he leave her in Virginia? He had hurt Ronan, he had cut him out of his life and with him everyone else had been deleted as well, Opal, Blue, Gansey. He had decided that he didn't need anyone, that, in the end, they were going to leave anyway, they were going to hurt him anyway, so it was better if he just left them behind with Henrietta, with the adventures, with late night kisses, with the comfort of friendship, with the wonder of magic. He had decided that he was going to make it without it before everything was going to be snatched away. If he had nothing, he was never going to miss it. He had his intellect and his hard work and they were going to be enough to buy him out of pain and loss. 

God, he had been so wrong.

He turns to look back at Catriona and, for what seems like the millionth time today, he tries to get his composure back and asks for a room.  Catriona processes his payment quickly and he books a room for a week with the possibility to extend his stay.

"The hotel is empty this early in the season, but I am here until nine if you need anything. The pub serves meals until nine as well, is called "The Glen Head". Don't expect gourmet, but their fish and chips is fantastic. Can't go wrong with that. On Sunday they serve roasted lamb with all the trimmings, and that's not to miss as well."

He had not realised he was hungry until Catriona mentions food and all of a sudden he feels ravenous, but he is not sure he can face the scrutiny of the local and more enquiries about what his intentions towards Ronan are. 

"Do they deliver? I will pay extra, of course."

She laughs, but is not mean, just amused. "They don't, city boy. And you will have to meet the rest of the people sooner or later. You are big news, Ronan has been living here for over five years and we've never met any of his family or friends, you are the first one and you look…" She stops and gives Adam such a loaded look that he feels the tips of his ears turning red.

He tries to protest but she stops him with a kinder smile than before. "You are very handsome. You're a handsome stranger visiting a tiny village in Ireland outside the holiday season looking to reconnect with an old friend, you must admit, it's like the plot of a romantic comedy. You have been here less than three hours and the rumors are already running wild. So far you are either a real estate tycoon in disguise who's here to destroy our way of life. You can imagine who started that one. One of the other conjectures is that you are a writer who is here to write Ronan's tragic story, and then we have the standard, you are a spy sent from the English government to add Donegal to the rest of Northern Ireland."

Adam cannot fault the locals for their imagination, in three hours they have been able to come up with a much more exciting life than the one he has been living for over a decade.

"And what is your theory, Catriona?" he asks almost against his better judgement.

Catriona rolls a pen across the desk several times before she replies, as if she is looking for the right words, for the right way to say them. Adam was right in thinking he should not have asked her because when she looks back at him, she quietly says: "I think you're here to make amends. No one in their right minds would move to this village, buy an old dilapidated cottage and then open an orphanage for injured ponies without a broken heart. And I think you are the one that broke his heart." 

It's as if all the women in Adam's life have a better grasp of what happens to him, or around him, than he has himself, even women he has known for less than four hours. And like the other women in his life, he is unable to structure his emotional response. 

"I think I've broken more than his heart."

She doesn't reply and Adam doesn't offer more, he has already exposed himself too much to someone who is a complete stranger, but it is as if his whole armour has been crumbling since he had found the courage to really look inside himself, and what he had seen had not been pretty.

Adam ends up having dinner at the pub after dropping his luggage into the small hotel room, the patrons stare at him through his whole meal but, thankfully, no one approaches him except for the guy who brings him his food, a truly exceptional plate of fresh battered cod and the crispiest chips he has ever eaten. He almost dares to approach the bar for a pint of the famed Guinness, but that would definitely bring some sort of interactions with the other people standing around and that would be way too much at this point. 

Back at the hotel he gets ready for bed and takes out his mobile phone from the depths of his carry on; he plugs it in and when it comes back to life there are four miscalls and one voicemail, all from Annabel.

"First new message, received today at twelve o' five. Adam, I cannot say that my parents and I appreciated you leaving in the middle of the night, but I am concerned as well as enraged. Whatever is going on, whatever you are going through, regardless of our fight… I am worried. Please call me back, just to let me know you are okay. End of messages. To listen to the message again, please…"

Adam turns the phone off. He knows he is being incredibly unfair to someone who clearly loves him, but that seems to be his modus operandi whenever someone gets too close to his heart. Why would someone like Annabel, accomplished, rich and well connected fall for someone like Adam? Why would a beautiful boy, a knight wearing an armour of dreams love him? Why?

Sleep doesn't bring him any answers, but he wakes up with a purple crocus crushed between his fingers. 

"Dóchas…"

He has breakfast is a small, busy café where he sees the same young girl from the the hotel, she gives him a dirty look and while she's walking out of the door she mock whispers to her friends: "I bet Ronan will punch him in the face next time he shows up at his house…"

Adam shakes his head and gives her a small wave, something that makes her bristle even more and she stomps out the door. Adam wishes Ronan had punched him, it would have been a more understandable reaction; instead he had stood there, fear written all over his face, a living, breathing testament to Adam's cruelty. 

He pays and leaves the café, he has no idea what he is going to do, but he has stuffed the crushed crocus inside his pocket and something across the land is calling his name with a deep, mournful longing and he is determined to answer with a truthful heart. He owes Ronan nothing less.

"Draíodóir…"

Catriona is setting up a display of fresh fruit and vegetables outside the corner shop slash post office and he walks over. She greets him with another kind smile and he is grateful for her, for someone that is neither openly hostile nor too curious. 

"Good morning, Catriona. How are you?" 

She smiles at him and cleans her hands on her apron. "Such a polite boy. Your  _ mamaí _ raised you well."

He doesn't contradict her, his mama did raise him somehow, she had been the one feeding him a steady diet of resentment and indifferent cruelty, and here he is now, living proof of her teachings. 

"I hate to bother you again, but I was wondering if you could help me. The girl from the hotel she mentioned horses, and you said that Ronan has opened a sort of orphanage for ponies, would you be able to tell me where it is? Maybe he will be more inclined to talk to me surrounded by animals, he always loved them better than people." 

An old lady approaches the store and, without missing a bit, says: "You talking about Ronan? You better wind your neck in, boy. He's doing the Lord's work, he has helped my Fionn with her weans many times." Adam manages to understand half of what she says, but the gist is that Ronan is not to be talked about badly around these people. Catriona ushers the old lady inside the shops and gives Adam a small smile over her shoulders.

"Adam here didn't mean anything by that, Mrs. Doyle, he and Ronan are old friends. Come on now, the tea you ordered has arrived."

Mrs. Doyle appears appeased by the news and Catriona leaves her to her shopping before coming back to Adam to give him directions to Ronan's place. 

"The stables are not far from here, I'm sure you won't have any trouble finding them. And... be kind to one other, okay? I think you both need it."

Adam accepts both the directions and the advice and and makes his way out waving goodbye to both Catriona and Mrs. Doyle. The old lady still looks suspicious, but she waves back, calling at him with a final "Say hi to that nice boy, from me. Tell him I'll send him some bambrack next time Siobhan and Dennis go visiting."

Adam nods politely, having, again, understood half of what she had said, but he doesn't miss the fondness in her voice. Apparently Ronan Lynch is not only able to charm animals and stroppy teenagers, but crotchety, old ladies as well. Adam wonders if he will have a chance to know this Ronan, the man who had carved a life for himself among these people. The man who inspires such loyalty and who is so clearly loved. 

It takes Adam just over ten minutes to drive to the address Catriona has given him, and when he gets there he can't help but being left amazed at how gorgeous the landscape really is. He had not had a chance to appreciate it last night, and now he marvels at the ferocious beauty of the rocky shore he can see in the near distance, at the whispering sea of green of the grassy hills, at how flowers dots the ground, wild and untamed. Ronan belongs here, he belongs with the ancient call of the ley line, with the myths, legends and religion that have shaped this land. 

He can see some ponies grazing in a nearby paddock, he looks at the sign above the main building which reads  _ Tearmann an chapaillín  _ and the ley line whispers through him.

"Pony's sanctuary."

A voice comes from inside the building and a young woman appears a few moments later.  She is wearing green wellington boots and an oversized pair of dungarees over a thick fleece, and her face is a friendly map of freckles and laugh lines. 

"Good morning, I'm Dr. McLynn. If you are looking for Ronan he is attending to the new foal, I am heading there myself, is there anything I can help you with?"

Adam holds out his hands and she shakes it, her smile never faltering. He introduces himself as an old friend and she doesn't question him, only remarking that she should have known that was the case as he had the same accent that Ronan had when he moved here.

She walks briskly beside him, clearly accustomed to the place and the terrain, and much better suited to it, her wellies protecting her from the mud, while Adam's leather shoes are immediately covered with it and, after few hundred meters across the field, his socks get wet too, making every step more difficult until he all but sinks into it and one of his shoes comes off altogether. 

He fishes it out of the mud and he is wondering how he is going to get back with no shoes when he hears Ronan's voice across the field. 

"Bea, what have I told you about taking in strays?"

Dr. McLynn, or Bea as Ronan has called her, is quick to reply "That you do that every day? How many dogs have you acquired this week? How many ponies?"

Ronan is still not looking at Adam but he makes his way towards them, he is dressed in similar fashion to Dr. McLynn and his long legs stride across the muddy field with practiced ease, gone is the coltish awkwardness of his youth, replaced by a frame built with hard work. 

"The foal is doing okay, but Aisling had a long labour. I just want to make sure she's alright, and you can check the rest of the herd while you are here. They're up to date with their vaccinations, but I'm taking  _ Toit _ and  _ Tine _ to visit the children ward at the hospital in Donegal this Friday, and I want to make sure everything is okay with them." 

Dr. McLynn doesn't miss the fact that Ronan is, for all intent and purposes, ignoring Adam, but she doesn't remark about it, she is familiar with Ronan, they are probably friends and Adam is a stranger, so she doesn't interfere. Adam is still holding on his ruined shoe and his foot is sinking deeper into the mud by the minute. Finally Ronan looks at him and his first words to him are: "Take off both your shoes, Parrish. I have another pair of wellies in the main stable, and they should fit you, unless your feet have grown in the past thirteen years." 

Ronan still has not learned the art of subtlety, and Adam finds it more comforting than it should be, it is confirmation that some part of the Ronan he used to know is still there, underneath this new person, this man who has turned his life around without giving up his soul in the process. 

"Thank you, Lynch. I appreciate it, I am sorry I came announced again."

"It's okay, the sanctuary is open to the public. You don't need an invitation. Not that I'd known where to send it…"

Dr. McLynn looks at the two of them and tries to hide her laughter but she ends up snorting inelegantly, Ronan casts her a withering look, but this only makes laugh harder. 

"What is it, Bea, would you like to share with the class?" Ronan asks.

It takes Bea a while to reply, still chuckling a little. "I'm sorry,  _ peata.  _ But you two are hilarious, he is trying so hard to be polite, I'm scared he'll burst a blood vessel or something, and you're being at your most passive aggressive. It's glorious."

The Ronan Adam used to know would have probably replied with something utterly offensive, or aggressive, but this Ronan looks at his friend with fond exasperation and ends up laughing with her. He shakes his head and tells her: "You're such a  _ diabhailín _ . How are you an adult?"

_ "An óinseach ag aoradh ar an amadán!" _ She replies, and Ronan laughs even more, a soft, happy sound that Adam remembers from his past, from when he was one of the few people who could elicit bursts of unbridled joy.

Bea starts walking towards the stables once again and, maybe because he has had time to regroup and he has not been completely ambushed by Adam's visit, or maybe because he has a back up in the shape of a friend, Ronan approaches Adam and truly looks at him, his eyes focusing on Adam's face as if he is looking for some traces of that freckled boy he had loved so much. Shame floods through Adam like a wave and he has to look down, unable to sustain the scrutiny. Ronan is no longer looking at him with fear in his eyes, but the fierce longing is mixed with something that Adam is well acquantainted with, pity. 

"Come on, Parrish. Take off those shoes and let's get to the stables so you can clean up. You're not afraid of horses, right? Even small ones?"

Adam looks back up, again taken by surprise by this new Ronan, by the gruff kindness in his voice, and he wonders if this Ronan is, in fact, not new, but who he was before his father's death, before Kavinsky, before almost losing himself to the daemon, before watching Gansey dying by the side of a dirt road. Old or new this Ronan is holding out an olive branch and Adam is not going to refuse it. 

He takes off his shoes and socks and lets his muddy feet really feel the softness of the earth, the velvet tickle of the grass. The soil is the most ancient storyteller and the ley line sings through everything, the flowers, the blades of grass, the scuttling of insects, and it gets amplified through Adam and he can hear the music of the words inside his whole body.

"Ceannródaí…"

"The land knows you. Are the ponies  _ yours _ ?" It's the wrong thing to ask, he realises it as soon as the words are out of his mouth, but he cannot take it back, nothing he has said or done can be taken back, if there is a reason behind this trip is to face what he has done, and hopefully find some sort of redemption if nothing else. 

Ronan doesn't stop walking, but he doesn't turn around either, his voice, when he speaks, is measured and cold once again. "Not in the way you think. No. They are wild, abandoned or neglected animals that, in a way or another, have found their way here. I don't know if there is any magic behind it, that's your area,  _ draíodóir _ ."

Adam is not sure what this land may need with him, or if he is even worthy of the title after so many year and so many mistakes, but the magic still flows through him, Fox Way had been a re-awakening, but Ireland has been filling the well of his power the moment he had touched down in Dublin. He decides that a talk about magic is premature to say the least, so he asks Ronan: "Did it take long to learn Irish?"

This time Ronan does turn around and Adam is happy to see that the soft amusement is back. "Good to see that you're still a massive nerd, Parrish! Of all the things you could have said, you pick that..." He shakes his head and, for a brief, perfect second, his razor sharp smile is all for Adam. And the ley line sings.

"Lúcháir…"

They finally reach the stables and find Bea checking the foal Ronan had mentioned earlier, it is a small, but sturdy thing, his coat a dark, glossy brown, like his mother, the one Ronan had called Aisling. 

"How are they doing, Bea?"

She strokes the foal's mane gently and stands up, brushing hay off her dungarees. "They are doing fine, Ronan. Aisling will need some fortified feed for the next couple of weeks, and I gave her a vitamin shot, but she just needs rest. Monitor if she has any troubles feeding her foal, but I don't think she'll have any issues, don't worry. Any name for him, yet? I need to fill the paperwork."

" _ Seacláid _ ."

"Chocolate? Really, Ronan? You're losing your edge."

Ronan scoffs and murmurs something softly in Irish to the foal, and then looks back at Bea. "Should I call him  _ cabaire _ , in your honour?"

" _ An óinseach ag aoradh ar an amadán _ , Ronan. Again. I'm going to check of the the rest of the herd, are  _ Toit _ and  _ Tine _ in the paddock by themselves?"

Ronan gives her directions and they talk about some of the other animals and Adam takes the opportunity to look at Ronan without being noticed. He watches how he stands, the confidence in the strong lines of his body, the sharp intelligence in his eyes, and tries to imagine what type of journey he has been on to get to this point, to this life. Ronan is thriving.

Without him.

Bea leaves and they are truly alone for the first time since the previous night's disastrous meeting. 

They both try to start a conversation and they both fail miserably, until Ronan asks him if he would like to pet  _ Seacláid _ , and it gets easier after that. The foal is timid, but he seems to warm up to Adam's touch quickly and, upon Ronan's reassurance, his mum lets him be petted.

Ronan tells him a bit about Aisling's history and teaches him how to feed her small slices of apple without being bitten. When the foal trots back to his mum, Adam can feel the smile stretching almost painfully big on his face. 

"Wanna see the rest of the place?"

Adam looks at his bare, muddy feet and Ronan laughs, congenial and lighthearted and Adam doesn't need the ley line to tell him what the feeling in his heart is. He may not know this new Ronan, but his heart still calls at him, even after all these years, even after all the hurt.

Ronan digs out an old pair of wellies and an equally old pair of socks and after a cursory wash Adam follows him out into the pastures.

Ronan tells Adam that the sanctuary is currently home to thirteen ponies, eight of which are permanent residents, either because they are too old to go out for adoption or because, clearly, Ronan loves them too much to see them go. He has two certified therapy ponies that he takes them to visit children wards at the hospital or to retirement homes, and he is planning to train the new foal if his disposition proves suitable. 

At one point Bea comes to say her goodbyes and she hugs Ronan for a long time. She whispers something in his ear that Adam cannot hear, and Ronan shakes his head and kisses her cheek.

"See you at church on Sunday?" she says.

"I'll be there." Ronan replies.

Adam is bestowed a hug as well and then Bea makes her way back to the main building, leaving them standing in a patch of sunlight. Adam can taste the salt of the ocean's air on his tongue, and closes his eyes to feel the warmth of the sun on his face. 

"This place is beautiful." The words are reductive, but it is hard to voice what he is really experiencing, too many things, too many feelings are crowding inside him. 

He is pretty sure that Ronan knows, the ley line seems to grow louder when they are close to one another, and he knows that Ronan can hear it. Maybe not in the same way Adam can, but they are both connected to it. Conduit and catalyst. 

He opens his eyes and Ronan is staring at him, the surgical blue of his eyes burn bright against the sunlight and Adam can see all of him, he can see how ancient his power is, how ancient and how far reaching.

He remembers Gansey telling him about the Celtic myth of the Stag King, how he was a mysterious deity, ruler of wild places, able to tame beasts and to live among them in harmony. 

The call of the ley line this time sounds like a long bellow.

_ "Cernunnos…" _

Gansey had been a king, but Ronan was a God.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Irish Translations
> 
> Taise = Ghost   
> [Translation here](https://www.focloir.ie/en/dictionary/ei/ghost/)  
> Dóchas = Hope [Translation here](https://www.focloir.ie/en/dictionary/ei/hope/)  
> Gortaithe = Distressed/Upset/Hurt [Translation here](https://www.focloir.ie/en/dictionary/ei/hurt)   
> Draíodóir = Magician [Translation here](https://www.focloir.ie/en/dictionary/ei/magician)   
> Mamaí = Mum [Translation here](https://www.focloir.ie/en/dictionary/ei/mum)   
> Tearmann an chapaillín = Pony's sanctuary   
> Tearmann = Sanctuary [Translation here](https://www.focloir.ie/en/dictionary/ei/sanctuary)   
> Capaillín = Pony [Translation here](https://www.focloir.ie/en/dictionary/ei/pony)   
> Aisling = Dream [Translation here](https://www.focloir.ie/en/dictionary/ei/dream)   
> Toit = Smoke [Translation here](https://www.focloir.ie/en/dictionary/ei/Smoke)   
> Tine = Fire/flames [Translation here](https://www.focloir.ie/en/dictionary/ei/Fire)   
> Peata = Pet as a term of endearment [Translation here](https://www.focloir.ie/en/dictionary/ei/pet)   
> Diabhailín = Pest/annoying person [Translation here](https://www.focloir.ie/en/dictionary/ei/pest)   
> An óinseach ag aoradh ar an amadán = The pot calling the kettle black [Translation here](https://www.focloir.ie/en/dictionary/ei/pot#pot__37)   
> Ceannródaí = Dreamer/visionary person [Translation here](https://www.focloir.ie/en/dictionary/ei/dreamer)   
> Lúcháir = Joy/Feeling of great pleasure [Translation here](https://www.focloir.ie/en/dictionary/ei/joy)   
> Cabaire = Big mouth [Translation here](https://www.focloir.ie/en/dictionary/ei/big+mouth)
> 
> Additional Notes
> 
> Wind your neck in = Irish colloquialism for "Be quiet!"  
> Wean = Irish slang for "child".  
> Bambrack = Irish barmbrack is a kind of sweet bread made with sultanas, raisins and glacé cherries. It’s enjoyed year-round, warmed in an oven and cut into slices that are then smothered with butter. [Source](https://theculturetrip.com/europe/ireland/articles/11-traditional-irish-desserts-to-try/)
> 
> Author's notes:  
> Yes, Mrs. Doyle is a total homage to the iconic character from Father Ted. You can find more about the show and Mrs. Doyle here: [Father Ted](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Father_Ted)   
> You can find some more information about the Celtic myth of Cernunnos [Here](https://mythopedia.com/celtic-mythology/gods/cernunnos/)


	8. Chapter 8

Adam had always been able to see the ferocious god-like power inside Ronan, he had witnessed it in the Church at St. Agnes so many years ago, and he had recognised it every time Ronan had manifested a dream or a nightmare; but the revelation of the demon wanting to destroy him had bookmarked Ronan as something, someone firmly on the opposite side of darkness. 

"I'm not a God, Parrish. I never was."

Ronan's voice is very much human right now, rough-edged, caught between anger and longing.

"You- you had this idea of me… That I was something more than I am. Something more than you are. And you are wrong, I'm not more, nor less. I'm just, for lack of a better word,  _ eile,  _ different."

Adam wants to object, he wants to argue that Ronan's very existence is a miracle, but all he ends up saying is "You are different. You - you laugh more. And you swear less."

Adam tries for levity, but every word has a double edge, able to cut open new and old wounds.

Ronan smiles, a small thing that still makes Adam oddly proud, but then he shakes his head and when he looks back at Adam his eyes are serious, almost sad and Adam tethers on the edge of hope and fear at what Ronan is going to say.

"Adam, it has been thirteen years, we both have changed."

Adam didn't think that being confronted with the reality of all the time they have spent apart was going to hurt so much, that it was going to be so brutal. He has lost thirteen years of Ronan's life and, in a way, he has lost thirteen years of his own life, a life that didn't have to be so lonely, so aseptic. 

The silence stretches between them, a pulled thread of memories they both share that still ties them together. 

"Adam, why are you here?" 

Adam pushes the heels of his hands against his eyes, a gesture that speaks of a time when all he had known was hurt, of a time when all he had to protect himself had been closing his eyes and waiting for it to pass. It doesn't help this time, because he is not a child anymore and because Ronan has never willingly hurt him. Because Ronan had let himself be hurt over and over without ever retaliating, defenseless by choice against Adams' cruelty. 

"Adam, look at me… Look at me."

Ronan takes hold of Adam's hand and his touch is so very warm, so very gentle. He pulls Adam's hand away from his face, but keeps them in his own hands, pressed against his own chest. Adam can feel him breathing, he can feel the fast beating of his heart and he splays his fingers above it, trying to read each beat like a Morse code. When he finally opens his eyes Ronan is looking at him with such sadness that Adam is almost taken back, but he doesn't move, he doesn't think he can, he knows he can't. Ronan murmurs something in Irish and the ley line sings the same note inside Adam's head.

_ "Liom a chaill tú…" _

This raw honesty is another thing that makes Ronan different from the one Adam used to know. The young man Adam had fallen in love with would have never admitted to his own feelings so plainly, in such a heartbreakingly simple way. 

"I am so sorry, Ronan." It's the only thing that Adam manages to say before Ronan takes a step back and lets go of his hands. Adam feels bereft all over again and tries to get closer to Ronan again, but for every step forward he takes, Ronan takes another step back, until Ronan puts a hand up and tells him:

"Stop. Just stop. I'm not- I'm not safe around you, Adam."

Adam stops immediately, he looks at Ronan's eyes and finds them filled with the same kind of fear he had spotted the night before, wild and mixed with longing. For a moment Adam can see Ronan as he used to be, his shaved head, the fragile line of his scarred wrists, furious at the world and scared of his own feelings. That boy who would have died before hurting him, but this man knows how dangerous Adam really is, and he cannot trust him. Adam cannot blame him. 

"I am sorry…" Adam says it again and, again, it feels so reductive, so empty. He tries again, never leaving Ronan's eyes, because he owes him this modicum of honesty at least.

"I am sorry for everything. I do not know what I was trying to do by flying half-way across the world, because words will never be able to translate what I feel, what I'm trying to communicate, what I want- what I would like you to understand. Truth is, I am not sure I can understand it, Ronan. I erased you- us, for over a decade. I left everyone I had ever loved in the past because I could not possibly believe that they were going to stay in my future. For a while I thought I did it as a preventive measure, because I was scared to lose you. But I don't know if that is true anymore. I think part of me wanted to hurt you, to hurt everyone. After a lifetime of being a punching bag to my father's fists and my mother's indifference, I wanted to have the power, I wanted to show you, Gansey, Blue and the whole world that I was not going to be in debt to anyone, not even emotionally." 

Ronan doesn't move, doesn't say a word, his stillness another anachronism to the narrative of his old life. He listens, he breathes through each one of Adam's words, a quiet, simmering anger shifting the fear from his eyes. 

"Ronan, please say something." Adam pleads.

"What do you want me to say? Do you want to be forgiven? Absolved?" Ronan's voice is thinned with rage, a vibrating note of pure anger. 

"I'm not a priest, I am not fucking God! I'm just a man, Adam. Look at me! LOOK AT ME, DAMNIT!"

Adam thought that he had known Ronan's rage, he had witnessed it against Kavinsky, against the Grey man, against the whole world for robbing him of his family, but it was nothing compared to this. His humanity has never been more God-like, ferocious and vulnerable at the same time. 

Adam watches him trying to tamp down the surge of power, but the ley line is singing through Ronan, a long, throbbing note of power. 

When Ronan speaks again his voice is quieter, but the effort he is putting into not letting his power surge through him is clear on his face. 

"Adam…" Ronan says again. "Adam, I don't know what you want from me, or better, what you need from me. But if you want me to forgive you for breaking up with me, I've already done that a long time ago."

Adam doesn't believe him, how could he? He had hurt Ronan so very badly with his words and with his actions, how can Ronan forgive that?

Ronan seems to understand his disbelief because he adds: "Adam, we were eighteen. We were two eighteen years old messed up kids. Jesus, between the two of us we had more emotional baggage than most people. We went through so much, more than many people go through a lifetime, and I poured everything I had into loving you. Everything."

Adam has to stop him, because this is exactly why he cannot understand how Ronan can say he has forgiven him. He tries again to apologise, to explain, but Ronan stops him again.

"Listen to me, you stubborn man." 

And at this Adam almost smiles and can't help but add: "What did Bea say? An óinseach ag aoradh ar an amadán." 

Ronan smiles despite himself and says: "You're such a smartass. Good to see that hasn't changed." He sobers up quickly though, and his words are coloured with a deep shade of melancholia. "I didn't want you to feel even more guilty when I said that I had put everything into loving you. I wanted you to understand that it was unfair of me. I put you in charge of all my happiness, I made you the beginning and end of everything and that was supremely unfair. You were just a boy. Like me. You had been fighting all your life for something better and then, once you were finally closer to get that, there I was, demanding more of you, while you were stretched out so very thin already. Don't get me wrong, it hurt. It hurt like fucking hell, and it did fuck me up for a long time, but, Adam, you weren't the only one who messed up."

When Ronan finishes talking the silence is almost complete, as if nature itself has quieted down around them; the loudest note is the ocean's undertow measuring the time stretching between them.

"I was cruel to you." Adam says softly, afraid to disturb the quiet around them, but unable to keep the words buried inside himself any longer. 

"I was cruel. You were never cruel… Not to me." He swallows the bitterness of his truth and forces his eyes to look back at Ronan, at the man that has forgiven him, but who, at the same time, looks at Adam with fear in his eyes. 

Ronan leans against the fence of the paddock and one of the ponies trots closer, looking for treats, Ronan runs his fingers through the soft mane and, after digging something out of his pockets he feeds it to the animal. This, of course, attracts the rest of the herd, which crowds around Ronan. " _Is leor sin, ná bí santach!_ I swear, they are like kids." When Ronan speaks again, it's to Adam, but he doesn't turn around, he leans over the fence and lets the closest pony rub his face with his muzzle. "I didn't have to be cruel to hurt you, Adam. You had your faults and I had mine. We were just too lost to really be able to build each other up without getting hurt in the process, without messing up the process. You dumping me was… I'm not going to say the best thing, because it hurt like fucking hell, but maybe it was the right thing at the time, for that I cannot be upset with you, not anymore. That was forgiven a long time ago."

Adam walks close to the fence and the ponies look at him, hoping for more treats, but when they see that he has none they trots back towards the middle of the field; Adam turns to look at Ronan and he catches the wind whispering through his curls, breathes the smell of the field, the faint sourness of sweat and hay. "What is it that you haven't forgiven, Ronan?" 

Ronan still refuses to look back at Adam, preferring to keep his eyes on the ponies, on the sharpening brightness of the horizon, but he doesn't refuse Adam an answer, his honesty now an arrow shooting straight, stripped of any barbed sarcasm. "I don't know if I will ever be able to forgive it. And I want to, I've tried to, but… "Ronan stops for a moment and pulls out something from the breast pocket of his flannel shirt; he grabs one of Adam's hands and makes him close his fist around it. Adam doesn't have to look to recognise what it is, it's his old watch, the one he had given to Opal. 

"You left me, and I was hurt. I was fucked up, but I had people around me, I had the chance to get better, to understand. She didn't. She didn't, Adam. All she knew of feelings, of true emotions was through us. I was made of rage, fear and self loathing when I manifested her, you were reason, kindness and we were love, as much as she could understand it. And you left her. Completely. She had no real concept of time passing, as in my dreams a moment could last a year, the rise and setting of the sun were human constructs, and she was fully  _ eile _ ." 

He stops for a moment, his words swallowed by pain, and when he speaks again, he does look at Adam once more, and the power surges through him with a venomous anger. 

"And she waited and waited. AND YOU NEVER CAME BACK. And she didn't know why, and she could not understand why I wasn't dragging you back. Whatever she had known of love was gone, and all she had left was me, and the dreams inside my head that threatened to destroy me at every wrong turn."

Adam doesn't think he has ever known shame, not like he does right now. He thought he knew the depths of his cruelty, but he had barely scratched the surface. He had hurt Ronan with a purpose, but Opal, Opal he had left behind without a thought. Even now, even after acknowledging his mistakes and his misdeed, he had forgotten her.

He is scared to ask, but what is left for him to do but to truly face himself and the consequences of his choices?

"Where is she now? I know you didn't rebuild Cabeswater, if she is not there where is she?"

Ronan doesn't ask him how he knows about Cabeswater, but Adam is pretty sure that he will very soon, if he manages not to lash out at Adam, something that he clearly wants to do if the clenched fist at his side and the furious humming of the ley line are anything to go by. 

Ronan may claim he is not a God all he wants, but his power touches everything around them. It makes Adam's skin prickle with electricity, it guides the winds in gusts through the moors, it makes the ocean sing with a deep, wild note. 

Adam can feel it in his veins like a fever. 

"She is gone." Ronan says, with a finality weaved with pain. "I let her go. She didn't belong to this world. It didn't make sense to her. All her instincts were more animal than human. She was  _ eile,  _ she was all alone in the end. "

Adam's reaction is not one he has had time to plan, or to control. The pain is sudden like his fury.

"You let her go?" He yells. "What the hell does that mean? What did you do with her? Ronan, what have you done?"

The bellowing of the ley line surges with a deafening sound and Adam finds himself on his knees with the force of it. His whole body throbs with it, Ronan's voice cutting through all his nerves' endings. 

"Fuck you, Adam. I knew, fuck I knew I should not have talked to you. I knew you were fucking dangerous, I knew it. But no, I'm a fucking idiot that thought that we could at least be friends, I thought that maybe if we talked, it was going to make things better, and instead here we are. You're quick to judge and take no fucking responsibility!" Ronan looms over Adam menacingly but doesn't move closer, his eyes flash with fury but his words are sad as well as angry.

"I didn't kill her, you fucking asshole. How can you fucking think… Do you really think me capable of something like that?"

Adam doesn't reply, he doesn't need to, and Ronan's hurt travels in waves through the soil, deep into the wet, dark history of the island.

"You think of me as a God one minute and a murderer the next, who do you want absolution from? Because I'm neither and I cannot cleanse your sins, you need a fucking priest for that."

_ "Cumha…" _

Pain speaks the same language in every world, in every reality and both Ronan and Adam are expert translators. When the ley line burns the words across their body, Adam can feel the way the tears are shaped in Ronan's eyes, their building pressure, the wet tracks they leave on his cheeks, the way they taste on Ronan's mouth.

"I sent her back to my dreams… " Ronan rubs off his tears with a child-like gesture, something completely heartbreaking. He breathes through a sob and continues: "When you left me I went back home, and I wanted to burn the whole place down, I wanted to destroy everything, because the only things left at The Barns were ghosts; my parents, my past and us. You were everywhere and I couldn't bear it. I wanted to disappear, but I couldn't. I couldn't, because even if I had no idea of what I was, what God had meant by making me, I had made Matthew, Chainsaw and Opal. They depended on me, I had tethered them to my own life with whatever fucking magic I was born with and I could not abandon them. So I sorted my shit out, for lack of better words. I had that fucking gift, curse, whatever you want to call it and I learnt to use it. Really use it." 

Adam can feel the pressure of the ley line easing off with the receding of Ronan's rage, and he is able to stand up, still choked up with fear and shame. 

"I learnt to dream without having to give part of myself to my dreams. Their lives are no longer mine, they are their own. Opal belonged among them, among all the dreams that are not alive yet, among memories and possibilities. She belongs to herself once more. She is free."

Adam can barely process what he has just heard, let alone the implications of how much power Ronan has learnt to wield, but he doesn't miss the implication behind Ronan's words.

"You mean she is free from me."

Ronan looks immensely tired all of a sudden, ancient in his furious grief. 

"Free from us, Adam. From us. She has forgotten us, she has forgotten the demon trying to undo me. She has forgotten what living and dying means, she is a dream again."

Adam finds that this reality where Opal is nothing more than a dream once again is harder to accept than the fact that she may have died, but he also knows that if there was another choice Ronan would have taken it. 

"Do you miss her?" He asks Ronan.

"Yes, I miss her. Every day. You abandoned her, I made her forget us. Neither of us are parents' material clearly."

Adam had thought of the three of them as a family once. That summer they had spent at The Barns before he had left for Harvard; it had been the happiest time of his life. He had known freedom, care, love and understanding and he had been happy. He had been responsible for someone else's happiness and it had felt so good to truly belong. 

Why did it trade it all for a life which is now falling apart?

"We were a family for a little while, weren't we?" Adam says. Ronan was not expecting such an admission, the surprise is written clearly across his handsome face. Surprise and sadness. 

"Why now, Adam? Why are you calling back at the past right now? We've both moved on one way or another, why are you trying to connect us back to that time when you were the one who took a hatchet to it and severed all the ties that bound us together?" 

Adam, Adam who's always prepared, who has made a point of always having the right words so that no one can ever catch him off guard, he is now stripped bare by the pain he has refused to acknowledge for so long, by the magic that lives inside him, through him and through Ronan. All Adam has left are words so raw they scour his throat.

"You called to me.... Cabeswater did. What I thought it was Cabeswater did. I was in a large house in DC, surrounded by prominent people, financially stable and with the prospect of more money and power coming my way. I was with a woman who loved me and who I had just proposed to, and the forest called to me in Latin and it had your voice." 

Adam stops for a moment, walks closer to Ronan, dares to put a hand on his cheek and map the sharp line of his jaw, his fingers relearning the topography of his face. "It had your voice, Ronan."

When Ronan kisses him it's with the bruising force of a fist. There is nothing gentle in the way he pulls at Adam's hair and moves his face the way he wants it, the heath of his mouth a branding iron. Adam has not been kissed like this in over thirteen years, but his body remembers, his body knows how Ronan was always able to surprise him with the tenderness of his violent kisses, how his blood would sing in his veins at each swipe of Ronan's tongue in his mouth. He fists his hands on Ronan's shirt and pulls him closer still, his body resonating at the same frequency as the ley line, a long, lingering note of wild desire, of need. Adam has never felt this desperate, not even when they were younger and discovering one another. Adam cannot understand how he has lived so long without it. 

_ Bhí a chroí trí thine. _

Kissing like this is like getting drunk on absinthe, Adam feels instantly drowsy with it, his limbs are lax with desire, malleable under Ronan's hand, he wants so much he cannot think, cannot process anything except Ronan's heat, the smell of his skin. He chases it by trailing his mouth along the column of Ronan's neck, where the blood rushes on the surface, where Adam can bite at his pulse point. He has been starving for so long that every touch brings another pang of hunger, he needs more, he wants more. 

"Ronan…" His voice is wrecked, he can hear the burr of his old accent in it, and Ronan's name is a honeyed, trickling note of want.

"Stop. Stop, please…" Ronan's voice seems to come from too far away and it takes Adam several seconds to realise that Ronan has let go of him and that he sounds almost in pain.

"You need to fucking go, Adam. Leave. Right now." Ronan's chest is still heaving, his breath is ragged and his neck is covered in red blotches, the result of kisses, bites and the fast pulsing of his blood. 

Thunder rumbles in the distance and the wind howls as if in pain. The ponies start to neigh in fear and the first lash of rain comes with the sting of ice on Adam's face. 

He looks back at Ronan and the fear in Ronan's eyes is all but drowning his desire.

"Ronan I didn't mean to…" he doesn't know how to finish his sentence, because he did mean it. He meant his words, he meant the kisses and everything in between. He has always been greedy, and he had justified it with the fact that he had grown up with so very little, both practically and emotionally. But Ronan had never been stingy with his affection, and Adam had taken advantage of it. 

What Adam ends up saying is, not for the first time, the wrong thing. 

"You were the one who kissed me, Ronan."

At his words the rain starts to fall in earnest, the wind shaping it into sharp arrows against both their faces. The ley line is displeased, Adam tries to call at his power, but Ronan's furious fear is a too powerful catalyst and Adam can only wrap his jacket closer around himself as the elements translate Ronan's emotions. 

"Always the lawyer, I see. Yes, I kissed you. And now I'm asking you to leave. Do you want a counter argument?" 

Adams seems to be one still able to bring out the mercurial quickness of Ronan's moods and he doesn't know if it is something to be proud or ashamed of. This burning creature of sharp passions is the one Adam used to know, the one who loved him, and he cannot help being happy that this kind of passion is still inside Ronan. 

"I just want to know why, Ronan."   


" _ A bheith cúramach cad is mian leat _ ." Ronan says. Lightning flashes through the sky and for a moment Ronan is a negative space printed against the vividly green landscape. 

"You need to leave because I'm asking you to. That should be enough, but if you want another reason is because during your heartfelt confession of how you heard my voice, you also confessed to be engaged. Have you forgotten that part? I'm not here to be your magical rebound, Adam. I think both you and I deserve better. Not to mention your fiancé. She definitely deserves better than you using our past as a justification for cheating on her."

Adam may have a law degree from Harvard, but Ronan has just silenced any objection he may have had. Ronan is right, of course. This whole endeavour has been unfair toward Annabel. No matter how he tries to spin the story, he has acted like a jackass towards her, and now he has made Ronan complicit in his deception. 

Adam is about to apologise again, but how many times can a person say I'm sorry before the words lose their meaning? Instead he makes his way back to his car, Ronan doesn't call him back, he doesn't try to stop him and Adam cannot blame him for it. Desire alone is not enough to make up for all the hurt and resentment. 

He drives back to Gleann Cholm Cille under the pouring rain, the sky a continuous ribbon of grey clouds, it's barely three in the afternoon but it is already dark enough that he needs to turn on his headlights and when he approaches a bend in the road the beam of the lights illuminates a small figure trying to shelter from the rain under a busted umbrella. He recognises the young girl from the hotel and the coffee place, he slows down and rolls down his window to ask her if she needs a lift and she looks at him first with diffidence, then with outright hostility before saying: 

"I'd rather get ran over, thank you." 

Adam is completely emotionally drained, but this tiny girl still manages to almost make him smile. She reminds him of both Blue and Opal, opinionated, loyal and wild, but she is neither. He needs to stop trying to recapture the past and face what is really going around him, and right now is a young girl who is going to get sick if she keeps walking in the rain. He plays dirty, but clearly his moral compass has not be pointing north in a long time, so he says:

"If you get sick you won't be able to visit Ronan, and he has a new born foal." 

If looks could kill Adam would be dead by the side of a deserted Irish road right now. She hoists her backpack higher on her shoulders and glares at him with all her might. "I'm not going to get in the car with a  _ strainséir.  _ I'm not stupid…." She starts walking again but, despite her clear antipathy, cannot help but walk back and ask: "You saw Aisling's foal? What did she have? What did Ronan call the foal?" She doesn't wait for Adam's answer and she shakes her head, her long hair whipping around her pointy face. "Nevermind. I'll ask him myself."

Adam doesn't try to convince her to get in the car again, but he can't let her walk another couple of miles in just her school uniform. His jacket is more or less dry and it will help her stay warm if nothing else. He gets out of the car and hands her his jacket. She takes it but she still looks at him with plain hostility. 

"You can bring it back at the hotel, or at the coffee shop," he tells her. 

She doesn't say thank you but her eyes soften a bit and she slips the jacket on, visibly happy with the added warmth. He walks back to the car, but before driving away he tells her: "Ronan named the new foal  _ Seacláid _ ." 

Her smile it's a small but brilliant thing, it illuminates her freckled face and Adam feels a little bit lighter. 

"I told him to name her that! He said he was going to call the new foal _Anachain!_ It means disaster. Can you imagine? He has terrible taste in names." This time Adam cannot help but smile at her. 

"I can totally believe it. Did he ever tell you about Chainsaw? It was his pet raven."

The young girl seems to have swapped hostility with curiosity and is delighted to hear that Ronan had a pet raven and Adam is more than happy to tell her about Chainsaw's antics and how Ronan had raised her since she was a chick. After a few minutes the rain eases off and the sky rips the ribbon of clouds with a slash of vivid blue. 

The young girl looks at the horizon and then back at Adam, she holds out her small hand and then says: "My name's Aoife. Aoife Speir." Adam shakes her hand and feels as if he has been bestowed a great gift. There is power in a name, and she is entrusting him with it. 

"Lovely to make your acquaintance, Aoife. I am Adam Parrish." 

She shakes her head at the silly formalities and then says: "I know who you are."

Of course she knows who he is, Catriona had warned him that a stranger in such a small village was going to cause a stir. He is still trying to be funny when he asks her:

"What is your theory about me being here? Do you think I'm a spy? A writer? Or a wealthy investor?" 

"Of course not." She says, before adding: "My  _ mamó,  _ she has the gift. She's a _ bean feasa.  _ And she has seen you. She has seen pain, she has seen light. She has seen you,  _ draíodóir _ . _ " _

The ley line sings softly in his head.

_ "Tú ar eolas…" _

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Irish Translations:  
> Eile = different/other [Translation here](https://www.focloir.ie/en/dictionary/ei/other)  
> Liom a chaill tú = I have missed you [Translation here](https://www.wordhippo.com/what-is/dynamic-translation/73b14877cf0bf0501636f844d5fcd0a3ffb298b5.html)  
> Is leor sin, ná bí santach = that's enough, don't be greedy [Translation here](https://www.focloir.ie/en/dictionary/ei/greedy)  
> Cumha = a sense of loss/sadness [Translation here](https://www.focloir.ie/en/dictionary/ei/loss)  
> Bhí a chroí trí thine = his heart was on fire [Translation here](https://www.wordhippo.com/what-is/dynamic-translation/21636296b494ef3d467e30f9ce70818ea56562c8.html)  
> A bheith cúramach cad is mian leat = be careful what you wish for [Translation here](https://www.wordhippo.com/what-is/the/irish-word-for-8e4cbbd1f43083f0ed14f23fadb33e45a892a401.html)  
> Strainséir = stranger [Translation here](https://www.focloir.ie/en/dictionary/ei/stranger)  
> Anachain = disaster [Translation here](https://www.focloir.ie/en/dictionary/ei/disaster)  
> Mamó = nana [Translation here](https://www.focloir.ie/en/dictionary/ei/nana)  
> Bean feasa = seer [Translation here](https://www.focloir.ie/en/dictionary/ei/seer)  
> Tú ar eolas = you are known [Translation here](https://www.wordhippo.com/what-is/dynamic-translation/877eed602e98fccf32265e2da3850bd4cb42614e.html)


	9. Chapter 9

Aoife leaves Adam by the side of the road, she offers no further explanation, she simply gives him back his jacket and starts walking back towards the village. Adam watches her for a while before he gets back inside the car but he doesn't start the engine, he simply sits inside the vehicle, the sky darkening around him. 

He fixes his eyes on the ocean licking the horizon with touches of blue and silver, he focuses on the never ending coming and going of the water, the way the tide moves slowly in, one breath of the ocean at the time. Adam takes a breath and then another, eyes wide open, he breathes in and out, his breathing his own tide moving inside his lungs, rushing like water.

_The ocean in the distance is a mirror of the night sky, and he looks up at the darkness glittering with stars. Arcturus shines brightest, and its light is the only one he needs to follow the path across the high grass and the brush of heather. He can feel the soil, still warm, under his feet and the voice calling his name is trickling honey and sharp mead._

_" Amhrán ar mo chroí... "_

_He knows who the voice belongs to, he knows the note of awe still lingering, he knows the shape of his mouth when he calls his name, when he raises his cry in battle, when he surrenders his body and his soul. He knows him._

_"Mo rí."_

_He bows his head when he sees the man waiting for him beneath the large tree, but the touch he bestows on his face and the kisses he places on his mouth are not obsequious, they are given and taken with an hunger born of secrecy and desire. They meet in the dark, sheltered by the woods, where they can be known, where the magic can flow through their body, where it can burn on their tongues, where they can summon the goddess and they can sharpen the strength of their powers._

_"Teacht ar ais chugam."_

_And it is not a plea, it's an order, and his king replies with the same oath each time._

_"I gcónaí."_

Adam is brought back to the present by the loud honking of a car horn. The reality around him coalesces too quickly and he feels as if he is about to throw up. He has no time to analyze how he feels, what he has seen and the stupidity to scry for so long all alone on a country road, because the person in the other car is getting more and more enraged if the loud, insistent honking is anything to go by. He finally manages to turn the car on and he drives back into town, his hands shake against the steering wheel as much as his heart beats wildly in his chest. 

When he gets back to the hotel Catriona is behind the desk and she gives him a concerned look, but he cannot muster more than a weak wave; his body is back to this present but his mind cannot stop going back to his vision. To the strength of the magic he had felt, like a living, breathing thing flowing between himself and Ronan. He had called Ronan _Mo ri_ , but Ronan had been the one to submit to his request, to give his promise with each kiss, with each word.

Back in his room Adam looks in the mirror and hardly recognises himself. His eyes are a wild, burning blue, his mouth is a ripe, bitten cherry and he can still taste Ronan's kisses on his tongue, both the ones in this present and the ones he had somehow witnessed from the past. 

What are they? Have they really been bound through time and space? Did they have any choice in finding one another? Or they had made the choice once and had sealed both their fates?

He has no answers for any of those questions, all he knows is what he had felt in his vision, what he had felt when Ronan had kissed him in the middle of the field. A sense of complete rightness, like finding a space where everything about him made sense, where he was not borrowing the image of who Adam Parrish was supposed to be, but he truly was that man. 

He wasn't just the kid raised by indifference and brutality, he wasn't just the survivor, the magician, the cruel ex boyfriend, the Harvard's graduate, the almost partner in a firm, the almost in love fiancée. For a moment he had been all of these things and more. He had stood there, both in his vision and in Ronan's field, and had been able to breathe freely for the first time in years. He had been able to hear his own heart. And his heart had told him the truth. 

Adam rummages in his luggage until he finds his cell phone and plugs it in to charge. When he turns it on there are more messages, some are from the law firm, one is from his gym and another one is from Annabel. 

"Adam, please let someone know you are okay. I think I deserve better than this silence, but if you do not want to talk to me, it's okay. Just, please, inform someone of your whereabouts. I am worried. We all are."

It's early afternoon in DC and Annabel is surely still at work, but she answers at the first ring.

"Adam?"

Annabel's voice, always so composed and collected, with a single word manages to sound both worried and angry. 

"Hi Annabel, yes it's me."

She waits for him to say something else, giving nothing away. Adam knows how much it has cost her to call him not once, but twice, begging him for some scrap of information. She is as stubborn and prideful as he is, and she deserves for him to let her hang on to her pride. She deserves so much more that he had been giving her, Ronan had been right about it. 

He tells her he is okay, he tells her he had travelled to Ireland and she just listens, she doesn't ask where and why he is in Ireland, she waits, her silence is louder than any questions she may be asking. 

"I came to see a friend."

Annabel doesn't know about Ronan, she doesn't know about Gansey, Blue and Noah. How could he tell her about the only true family he had ever had? The only true friends he had ever loved with all his heart? How to explain the impossibility of the events and feelings that had bound them together? The uniqueness of their circumstances, of their own lives had set them apart from the rest of the world, and away from one another no one was ever going to be able to understand them. 

"I used to go to school with him, back in Virginia."

He is feeding her crumbs knowing full well that she knows he is stalling, that she knows him too well to fall for platitudes, or worse, half truths.

"He was the first person I have ever loved."

Annabel is a planner and Adam is sure that she has gone through every possible scenario that could justify a break up and Adam's sudden departure. She has come up with strategies and counter strategies, she has not gone into this conversation unprepared, but Adam's tone, more than his words, trips her up and her next reaction is completely genuine.

"And you love him still?"

This should be an easy answer to give, after all he has travelled across the ocean for Ronan, he has seen them bound to each other through time, he had been kissing him just a few hours before. It should be a simple answer, but it isn't. The past, recent and remote, is not enough to give whatever is feeling for Ronan the word love. Because love is too small a word to encompass Ronan. 

"It is not that simple, Annabel."

This time he can hear when she gives in into her anger. She has been raised to never reveal her cards, to always assess the situation from all angles before making a move, but right now her feelings take over and she gives into all the worry, pain and humiliation she has experienced in the last week. 

"It is that simple, Adam. Do you still love this _school friend_ of yours? This friend you have never once mentioned in the four years I have known you, this friend you went to see out of the blue, after I gave you back my engagement ring? This friend who lives all across the world. Do you love this _friend_?" 

He can picture pacing in her office, her hand clenched at her side, her mouth stretched into a thin line. He knows her, he knows how she works so hard to be in control, and he hates to cause her pain, but he seems unable to do very little else to the people who open their hearts to him.

He sits on the bed and takes a dip breath before telling her: "His name is Ronan, I have known him since I was sixteen. I broke his heart when we were barely nineteen. I have not seen him since." The words come out easier than he had expected, they flow out of him naturally, and they may not paint the full picture of what him and Ronan are, and what they have experienced, but he owes Annabel as much truth as he can. He has loved her and he still does, they are so similar, and she has helped him so much. 

"Ronan is more than I can describe. He has a fondness for broken things, he has the softest heart I have ever encountered, but he is also abrasive and rude and has a barbwire tongue. He can and will hurt you if he feels attacked. " 

"It sounds like you are describing a wild animal, Adam." Annabel still sounds hurt but her voice is softer, the sharp tang of anger diluted by Adam's honesty. 

Adam laughs, a small sound that sounds almost out of place in such a charged conversation, but Annabel echoes it breaking the tension. 

"Back in Virginia, some people used to call him snake." Adam says. 

"And is he?" she adds.

"No. No he is not. If I had to compare it to any animal it would be a wolf. Fiercely loyal, wild, aggressive, but also capable of so much love. He is smart and kind, of the two of us he was the one with the heart, not me. I was the snake. And I feel like, after all these years, I still am."

Annabel is quiet for a long time and Adam listens to her breathing, listens to her as she silently selects the words, as she negotiates between her heart and her head.

"I don't think you are a snake, Adam." Is what she ends up saying. "I wouldn't have fallen in love with you if you were. Adam, just tell me one thing. Just tell me what you want. Not from me or from him. What is it that you truly want? I thought it was a career, success and a life with me, and if it is, then come home and we will keep working towards these goals together, but if it is not, then I deserve to know." 

Adam has always loved Annabel's ability to be both intensely rational and articulate in all moments of her life, and even now she has pinpointed with perfect accuracy the core of the matter. What is it that he wants? Does he want to go back and realise the plans he has been working on since he was in high school? Does he want Annabel and all the accoutrements of wealth? Truth is he does not know and so he tries stalling, thinking that maybe, maybe if he spends more time thinking about it, reviewing the pros and cons he will be able to be, if not completely truthful with her and himself, at least able to make a choice.

"Annabel, I think this is too important to talk it over the phone." 

As soon as he says he realises that she will be able to see through his attempt at deflection; she knows him too well and she is too smart to fall for it. Her reply is crisp, with a disappointed precision.

"Adam, I do not need to see you face to face if you decide to end our relationship, and if you have decided that what you want is the life we have been planning together, I will see you when you get back. I just need you to be honest, with me and with yourself."

Adam feels as if his whole life since that day at Harvard has been just one long list of lies, of compromises and adulterated truths. He has grown so accustomed at bending the truth, inside and outside court, that he is not sure he has the vocabulary left to speak the truth. The only time he had felt he had been truly honest was when he had kissed Ronan.

"Annabel… " He tries but nothing else comes at first, so much so that he can hear her growing more and more frustrated through the phone. 

"Adam, you know this should not be this hard, right? I do not know what has happened, but things have started changing around Christmas, just after you proposed. I have not changed, I am still the woman you asked to marry you, I am the same Annabel, so if it isn't me, what is it?"

All of a sudden Adam hates that she can still be this rational and calm, while he feels as if all he wants to do is scream at the top of his lungs until there is no air left for more lies and more regrets. This wonderfully intelligent woman deserves better than he has become, she deserves better than what he was about to promise her.

"Truth is… I don't really know, Annabel. I do not know what it is that I want, that I need." He cannot tell her about Ronan being the Greywaren, or the magic that binds them together, but he can tell her that whatever the future is going to be, they will not be sharing it. 

"The man you met, the man I made myself to be… I don't know if it is the real me anymore. If he ever was. I never lied to you with intent, ever. All I have ever wanted, since I was twelve years old, was to be successful and to achieve a life to be proud of, a life with power and money, and I have burnt everything and everyone in my past to achieve it and now that the goal is in reaching distance I am questioning everything."

Adam starts pacing around the small room, but Annabel doesn't interrupt him, she doesn't ask questions, she waits him out, having always been strategically patient with both friends and adversaries. 

"I was more once…" Adam doesn't elaborate, and Annabel doesn't ask for an explanation and what he says next is not a surprise for either of them. "I cannot come home yet, I do not want to come home and pretend like nothing has happened. I need to figure out who I am, who I want to be, and you deserve better than someone that, having found someone like you, still cannot figure out what to do with himself. You deserve someone that can love you the right way."

Annabel doesn't let him continue and, probably despite her better judgement, and upbringing, stops him, her composure finally slipping.

"Please do not give me the spiel about how I am too good for you. I deserve better than that pedestrian excuse. _You_ are better than that. It's over, fine. I accept it, I am not going to beg for us to get back together, but do not insult me by belittling yourself in my favour, because in doing so you are implying that I was too stupid to see that you were not the right person. You were never the overtly romantic type, and I liked that, I liked that you were hyper rational in all your choices, so, even if you have realised that you do not want to be that person anymore, don't you dare erase what we were by telling me that I deserve better. You say you want to be different, but you don't have to cancel who you were altogether. You said it yourself, you erased all the people from your past to turn yourself into something else, do not make the same mistake. Think about it, maybe who you were before and who you are now are both part of you, we are not just one thing, Adam." 

Adam, once again, is reminded of why he had fallen in love with her. Her intelligence and acumen are only equal to her kindness and insight, and so he tells her. He tells her what he admires about her, what he has loved and still loves of her character and strength. He gives her a different kind of honesty, one that doesn't diminish what they had shared, but celebrates it. It still hurts, but it's a hurt that they both can decode into something better. 

"You have been the part of me I liked the most in the past four years, and that is something that I do not want to forget. It's something that I will not forget, Annabel."

She is quiet for a while, the silence stretched thin between them, until it unravels in the softness of her final words.

"Goodbye, Adam."  
  


The line goes quiet and he sits on his bed cradling his phone in his hands for a long time before he manages to stand up. He starts undressing only to realise that he is still wearing the rubber boots and that he has left his shoes in Ronan's barn. He looks at the mud-speckled boots and starts to shake, all his emotions surfacing at once, pain, regret, desire, anger.

Annabel is gone, his future is in jeopardy, but all he can focus on is the old pair of boots and the memory of Ronan's hands on his body. He ends up sitting on the carpeted floor, his head in his hands wondering how he can be the magician, how he can see across time and space and yet he is completely blind to his present, to his own self. 

He has just decided to stand up and go and take a shower when there is a knock at his door. He is in no state to deal with Catriona or any of the other characters that seems to populate the village, so when he wrenches the door open he is not expecting to find Ronan standing there holding his shoes in his hands. 

"You forgot these." 

Adam must look worse than he thought because Ronan's mouth thins like it does when something upsets him. He pushes his way inside the room without waiting for an invitation and closes the door behind him. 

"What happened? You look like shit."

The mix of worry and insults is so familiar that Adam can't help but laugh; he doesn't know this new Ronan, but parts of the teenager he used to know are still there. Annabel was right, of course, we are not just one thing. 

"Good to see you can still laugh at me, Parrish." Ronan sits on the bed like he belongs in it and Adam's thoughts jump back to his old room at St. Agnes, with its narrow bed and Ronan's long limbs sprawled across it, drowsy with sleep and sex. 

The hit of desire is so strong that it dries the laughter in his throat. 

Ronan looks pissed off and concerned at the same time, but while once he would have picked a fight to figure out what was going on, now he simply asks him again.

"Are you okay? Did something happen after you left?"

Adam sits on the bed beside Ronan and it would be so easy to just turn around and kiss him, like when they were young in Ronan's room, in Ronan's fields, in Ronan's world. It would be so easy. Adam looks into Ronan's methylene blue eyes and touches his mouth with the tips of his fingers. Ronan's intake of air is loud in the quiet room, but Adam doesn't do anything else, he is well aware that this too much already, that this is playing dirty, but the burning in his veins is much more than just desire, is recognition, is the awareness that this man, Ronan, truly knows him, even the really ugly parts.

"Adam…"

Adam brushes Ronan's bottom lip and the methylene in his eyes burns Prussian blue. Adam moves closer but Ronan stops him, he holds Adam's wrist in his grip but doesn't move away. 

When he speaks his voice is a low rumble, but his words are firm.

"Talk to me, Adam."

Adam's laughter this time is a sharp, humorless thing. 

"Things really have changed, Ronan Lynch wants to talk. Who would have thought."

Ronan immediately lets go of his wrist and stands up, his shoulders tense, teeth bared. 

"I shouldn't have come. Just give my wellies to Catriona, she'll get them back to me." 

He makes it to the door before Adam blurts out: "I have spoken with Annabel, my fiancé. Well, my ex fiancé. We ended it."

If Adam was expecting Ronan to be happy about the news, he was seriously mistaken, because Ronan's words at his revelation are: "And so now we should have sex on your rented hotel bed? Is that what you thought it was going to happen? You're single again so we should fuck? Not considering the fact that I may not be single, there are the twelve years where you pretended I did not exist, and what we discussed earlier on, and you still thought that the best approach was trying to seduce me? Fuck Adam, what the hell happened to you?" 

Adam's first instinct is to punch Ronan. No one has ever been able to call him out on his bullshit like Ronan, and no one has ever made him as mad as Ronan does. Ronan who had been shown love since birth, Ronan who had grown up surrounded by understanding and joy, Ronan had the galls to ask him what happened. Adam doesn't punch him, but his words are equally ugly: "I have grown up, I graduated Harvard, I have made partner in a law firm by the age of thirty-two, that's what happened! That's what happened. I MADE IT HAPPEN. I DID IT. I PROVED THEM WRONG!"

The look in Ronan's eyes at the end of his rant is enough to renew his desire to punch him. He looks at Adam with something too close to pity for Adam's comfort and he would rather have Ronan hate him, fear him, than pity him. 

"Who are they, Adam?"

"Fuck you, Ronan."

"Who are they, Adam?"

Adam clenches his fists at his side, the ley line hums loudly.

_"Tú ar eolas…"_

He is known. The land may know him as the magician, but Ronan knows the man, Ronan knew the boy, Ronan loved him regardless. Anger leaves his body with the same sharp swiftness it had arrived, and it leaves him hollowed out, it snaps the strings of his control and he collapses back on the floor, in the same position he was before Ronan had knocked at his door.

Ronan sits in front of him, his long legs bracketing Adam, he doesn't ask the question again, they both know the answer to it, but even without acknowledging them, the shadows of Adam's parents are still looming large. 

"You're more than that, Adam. You're the magician, you saved Gansey, you saved me. More than once."

Adam doesn't look up, raising his head feels too much of an effort right now. "Make up your mind, Ronan. I'm either good or I'm a piece of shit, what is it? You told me earlier that you cannot forgive me for Opal, a few minutes ago you called in question my entire character, and now I'm a saviour? I cannot be both."

Ronan moves closer shifting on his knees, he puts his hands on Adam's shoulders and forces him to look up. "Why can't you? I can pull stuff out of my dreams and I run a pony sanctuary at the same time. I help local shitheads get their lives in order, but I'm also an asshole who cannot let go of the past and still fights with his brother. You've been working so fucking hard all your life to be something, someone you thought you had to be, but maybe that's not all there is. You do know this. You would not be here otherwise. You wouldn't still be wrestling with the fact that your parents were fucking horrible people. They could have been anything, but they chose to treat you like shit. You don't have to prove anything to anyone, not even me. The fact that I still have trouble forgiving you for Opal is my shit to deal with, not yours."

When Adam puts his hands on Ronan's face his only intent is closeness and Ronan doesn't push him away, he just slides his arms around Adam's shoulder and hugs him. They stay like that for a while, Ronan still on his knees and Adam unable to let go for fear that this moment of peace will somehow be shattered. When he feels Ronan starting to shift he holds onto him tighter and can feel Ronan smiling against his neck. "I just realised that I haven't told you that I'm happy you came… Because I am. I'm really happy you found me."

Adam buries his face in Ronan's shoulder and dares to bare himself to the possibility of more hurt. "I'm glad I came. I still have no clue how to fix anything, how to figure out what to do, but I'm happy I'm here."

Ronan's smile turns into a soft chuckle and Adam has never been able to resist seeing Ronan Lynch smiling, he still prides himself for being one of the few that is privileged to see him smile. They look at each other and Ronan tells him: "You don't have to sort your life all at once, Adam. It will take time. Why don't we start with you taking a shower and then I can cook you dinner?"

"You cook?" Adam can't help blurting out.

Ronan doesn't look offended, instead he laughs again, shoving jokingly at Adam before standing up. "Yes, I cook. You, asshole. Come back to my house in an hour, and prepare to be amazed by culinary skills."

Ronan helps Adam up and for a moment they just stand in front of one another, grown up versions of who they used to be, but still linked, still connected by something bigger than themselves. "I'll see you in an hour." Ronan says, but he doesn't move, his hand still holding onto Adam's elbow. The seconds trickle slowly, the time expanding like a lung, until Adam can feel Ronan's breath on his lips. It's not a kiss, it's something even more intimate, it's Ronan pushing his desires to the surface, it's Ronan revealing his heart, bringing it out in the open, risking it again, like he had done so many years ago in his childhood room. 

Adam could kiss him, he wants to, and it would be so very easy. They could kiss and forget dinner. They could kiss and forget everything else and have sex. It could just be the two of them, like in Cabeswater, in a space with no time and no boundaries. They could, but it would be an insult to who they used to be, it would be an insult to who Ronan had become. 

Adam steps back and Ronan exhales slowly, his eyes are so blue they look otherworldly and Adam doesn't think he has ever seen a more magical, wild creature than the one standing in front of him. 

The ley line hums so loudly they both can feel it in their bones. 

"I'll see you in an hour." Adam repeats.

Ronan takes a moment to compose himself and it's like watching a God struggling back into a borrowed human form. 

"You are a very dangerous man, Adam Parrish."

"And yet, you invited him to your home."

"You're the one with the fancy degree, I'm the high school dropout. I never claimed I was clever."

They are both being intentionally dense, but it breaks the tension and the ley line quiets slowly, with a small rumble of disappointment. 

The line charges them and feeds off of them at the same time and both Adam and Ronan are at their most powerful when they work together.

When Ronan leaves Adam takes a long shower, changes into clean clothes and shaves. Scrubbed clean he looks at himself in the small bathroom mirror and he feels as if his reflection should match the monumental changes and shifts he has experienced in the past few hours, but his face looks the same, older and more tired, but the freckles across his nose and cheekbones are the same, his eyes are still blue, his nose still straight. 

Ronan used to call him beautiful, something that, at seventeen, he had found incredibly embarrassing; now Ronan calls him dangerous, but with the same awed tone and Adam can't help but hope. 

He walks out of the hotel and the sky is an ocean of black stitched with stars, he drives to Ronan quickly, his heart beating in time with the soft hum of the ley line. A word sang over and over with the flowing heartbeat of his magic. 

_"Grá geal…"_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Irish Translations:
> 
> "Amhrán ar mo chroí... = Song of my heart [Translation here](https://www.wordhippo.com/what-is/dynamic-translation/c9eba44a5d706ae18aa18750f0d0bb15cd0e259a.html)  
> "Mo ri." = My king [Translation here](https://www.wordhippo.com/what-is/the/irish-word-for-58a560ee53f41d510e9cf1533646a51e1f6a2070.html)  
> "Teacht ar ais chugam." = Come back to me [Translation here](https://www.wordhippo.com/what-is/dynamic-translation/c9eba44a5d706ae18aa18750f0d0bb15cd0e259a.html)  
> "I gcónaí." = Always [Translation here](https://www.focloir.ie/en/dictionary/ei/always)  
> "Grá geal. = Beloved [Translation here](https://www.focloir.ie/en/dictionary/ei/beloved)  
> 


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The wonderful Art is provided by the super talented [Pank0](https://pank0.tumblr.com/)  
> go and tell her how amazing she is!

Ronan's house is not what Adam was expecting. It's almost spartan, instead of being filled with expensive things that Ronan could easily dream for himself, it's cosy, with many pieces looking hand made. There is a large sofa covered in an array of multi coloured blankets that Adam is sure had been knitted by some of the old ladies from the village, where four dogs are snoozing away. 

The large wolfhound is keeping some sort of vigil by a lit fireplace, her black eyes tracking Adam around the room.

"Are you sure your dog won't eat me? She doesn't look too happy to have me here."

Ronan is standing by the stove whipping butter into some fluffy mashed potatoes and Adam's stomach rumbles. 

" _Taise_ is just territorial, you are in her space and she is trying to figure you out. If you feed her a bit of your steak she'll be yours for life."

Ronan turns the steak on the grill and Adam's stomach rumbles even louder. 

"Parrish, when was the last time you ate? How are you an adult?"

"Me? Says the man who used to live off of ramen and sour patch kids!"

"You forget Nino's pizza!" Ronan adds. 

Adam had tried very hard to forget all of it, but with Ronan here the memories that used to cut deep into his soul are, somehow, softer, the sharp edges sanded off by time and by Ronan's voice telling him the story of their past.

The food is delicious, simple but tasty, and Adam eats it with gusto, serving himself a double helping of mashed potatoes. He offers his last bit of steak to _Taise_ and the large dog takes it from his hand with surprising gentleness. Adam dares a quick brush to her head and the dog all but puts her large muzzle in his hand, she whuffles happily and Adam smiles down at her, his hand scratching behind her ears. When he looks up Ronan is smiling, something soft and fond, something Adam had thought he was never going to witness again. He had not lied when he had told Annabel that Ronan had the softest heart, the boy wrapped in thorns with a barbwire tongue, was a creation born out of pain and trauma, but the heart behind the pain was a bright, tender thing. 

"Told you…. She's now yours. Good luck feeding her, half of my monthly expenses are for her food alone."

Adam looks around the room and the other four dogs are still fast asleep on the sofa, seemingly indifferent to the smell of steak. 

"How many dogs do you have in total? Are you hiding the rest of your menagerie in your bedroom?" Adam says. 

"Menagerie? Parrish, you posh fuck. Who says menagerie? Not even Dick says menagerie." 

Adam winces at the mention of Gansey's name, knowing full well that his broken friendship with him and Blue is something he will have to face one day. Ronan seems to sense this and, unlike in the past, where his modus operandi was to push back and to provoke, now he steers the conversation towards safer ground.

"These are all the dogs. _Taise, Bean, Gaoth Liath, Samhradh_ and the smaller over there, with his butt in the air, as usual, is _Madra Giobach_. I also have a litter of feral kittens at the barn, and a family of crows nesting on my roof, and I have been feeding some wild hares, but that's all."

"That's all? No wolves, no foxes? Lynch, I'm disappointed." 

Ronan gives him the finger and adds matter of fact: "No, they'd eat my chickens. I have six hens and one rooster."

Adam's laughter wakes up the dog Ronan had called _Madra Giobach_ , he gives Adam a baleful look, makes a couple of whuffling noises and then collapses back on the sofa.

"Don't mind _Giobach_ , he has only slept twenty hours today. He's a lazy bum." Ronan says. 

Adam can hear the fondness in Ronan's words and he has not escaped his attention that the older dog has double the amount of blankets to lay on, no matter what Ronan says, he clearly loves and cares for the dog. 

"What do their names mean?" 

The question is pretty innocent, but Ronan falters, the tip of his ears turns pink and he takes a while before he mumbles something that Adam doesn't catch.

"What? Ronan, I have no idea what you just said, was that Irish as well?"

Ronan shakes his head, he looks at the dogs avoiding Adam's eyes. "They mean… Ghost, Lady, Grey Wind, Summer and Shaggy Dog. And before you say anything, I know okay? I know…"

Ronan finally looks back at Adam and when he sees him holding his laughter he throws a napkin at him.

"Shut up, Parrish. They're cool names."

Adam gives up trying to contain his laughter and he laughs so hard that the other dogs wake up as well and they start barking in time with his laughter, something that brings on more laughing. Ronan shouts at the dogs in Irish and they quiet down, but Adam is laughing so hard he is in tears.

"Fuck you, Parrish. You say menagerie, at least I'm cool."

Adam finally manages to stop laughing, he dries his eyes and says. "Well, I wouldn't exactly say that naming your dogs like the direwolves in Game of Thrones is cool… Also, where's Nymeria, Ronan? Arya would be so disappointed in you."

This time Ronan gives him two fingers and add a colorful arrays of "fuck yous" to the mix. Adam is about to apologise, but then Ronan adds: "Nymeria is the feral mama cat." And Adam starts laughing again. 

It feels good to laugh again, to feel this light again, to be with Ronan who was, and still is, the only one that can bring out both happiness and rage in Adam, like no one else can. 

"Are you done?" Ronan sounds put off, but not enough to be really upset and Adam holds up his arms in surrender. 

"I'm done. I promise. Just one more thing, are you house Stark or Targaryen?" He manages to run before Ronan can reach him, Ronan stalks him across the room and Adam takes steps back trying to apologise while still laughing until he trips on some dog's toy and ends up sprawled on the floor. Ronan looks down at him still trying to scowl. 

"You're such an asshole, Parrish! And of course I'm house Stark. I dressed up as Jon Snow last Halloween, I got a replica Longclaw and all. The kids loved it." Ronan holds out a hand to help him out but Adam pulls at Ronan's hand until he ends up hovering over Adam's body, his hands bracketing Adam. 

Adam looks up at Ronan's face and shakes his head, happiness bubbling in his veins. "You, giant nerd." He touches Ronan's face with the tip of his fingers, he follows the sharpness of his cheekbones, the arrogant arch of his eyebrows and he tangles them in the soft curls tumbling over his forehead. His voice is soft when he says "I like it like this."

Ronan is not moving but Adam can see the pulse beating fast in his neck. He twirls one of the curls around his finger and pulls gently, Ronan gasps and he grabs at Adam's wrist. 

"Bhfuil tú chomh contúirteach."

Adam feels the words inside his bones, the ley line translates the meaning, but he can feel the banked fire of desire behind them all on his own.

Ronan's fingers are hot against his skin and Adam feels dizzy with want. He moves his other hand on the back of Ronan's neck and tries to pull him for a kiss but Ronan shakes his head. Adam knows that Ronan wants him, the desire between them is a language he had always been able to understand and translate, but when Ronan calls him dangerous he means it in more ways than one. 

"Come on, come up. The floor is cold and your fancy clothes will get covered in dog's hair." 

Adam touches Ronan's face one last time, he runs his fingers over the straight bridge of his nose, the sharp slash of his mouth and the slope of his chin. He remembers his vision, the way the darkness had hidden them and nurtured them, how the magic had been all pervasive, a wave of power for each breath taken in each other's mouths. 

He murmurs: " _Mo ri_." and Ronan's power surges around them like the tide. The dogs start howling mournfully and all around them the walls seem receding until all Adam can see are the heather covered moors, all he can hear are screams and all he can smell is blood. 

_He is standing on a field, arms raised to the sky, his cry louder than the clash of iron, louder than the howling wind._

_"Bandia, a thabhairt dó ar ais dom!"_

_The king lies at his feet, a slash of crimson across his flank, the blood darkening the soil._

"Adam! Adam, fuck! Adam, come back. You asshole, come back, come back." 

Ronan's face is the first thing he sees when the vision fades, the room seems to coalesce more slowly around them. He looks around and he spots all the dogs huddled together shaking.

"You scared the shit out of me, Parrish. What the hell?"

Adam is still unsure which reality he belongs to and he surges up, he pushes Ronan on his back and lifts the hem of Ronan's shirt. The skin underneath is unmarred, not crudely slash with iron, not bleeding on the earth. Adam can feel the blood warming Ronan's skin and Ronan's strong, fast breaths and he all but collapses on top of him. 

"You were dead. You were dead. I was meant to protect you and I let you die. You promised you were always going to come back to me, but you died. You died."

Ronan wraps his arms around Adam's shoulders and they lie on the floor for a long time. The dogs quiet and the fire in the earth burns down to embers. Adam rests his head on Ronan's chest, his good ear over his heart, counting beats and breaths, over and over. 

When the last ember in the fireplaces goes out Ronan murmurs something that Adam's cannot hear, but the ley line translates it through his heart.

_"Tá mé beo, tá tú beo. Táimid le chéile. Le anseo."_

Adam looks up and this time is Ronan who touches his face, who brushes his blunt fingers on his cheek, on his neck. 

"This land is very old, Adam. There are many stories written in blood in the ground. You and I are awakening some of them, we are calling back the echoes of their lives."

The sense of displacement slowly fades away, but Adam doesn't move, laying like this with Ronan's solid body beneath him is the safest he has felt in a long time, it's cliché and it's something that he will not voice to Ronan, but if there ever was a home for him, it was in Ronan's arms and he had, consciously, given that up. 

Ronan is uncomfortable on the hard floor but he doesn't move as well, they are finding each other across time and space and this moment, in his small house, in a small village in the middle of nowhere it's a new beginning. He doesn't know what it is that it's starting, he doesn't know if it will spell happiness or more heartache, but things are not static, the heart in his chest has been at peace, but he has not known true passion in a long time, he has not dreamt unless it was for survival and something inside of him had dimmed and now the light is growing brighter. He wants to be blinded by it. 

"Stay here tonight."

Adam can feel the hum of the words but cannot hear them, he looks up and Ronan has such a look of naked vulnerability in his face that Adam can see the broken seventeen years old so clearly he wonders, for a moment, if all these years have been a nightmare they were both trapped in. 

"Stay here tonight." Ronan says again. 

Adam nods and slowly stands back up. Ronan is still laying on the floor, his shirt rucked up, his hair a halo of messy curls, his eyes burning. Adam helps him up and they stand in front of each other, all the words he wants to say are stuck in Adam's throat and he ends up simply taking Ronan's hand. They turn off the lights and darkness falls around them like a blanket, the dogs snore by the fireplace and Ronan navigates their way to his bedroom. They strip down in silence, Ronan gives him one of his shirts to sleep in and it's like being back in St. Agnes, except Ronan's room is filled with a large wrought iron bed and the wardrobe in a corner looks clearly handmade, it's spartan but warm, just like the rest of his house.

They haven't shared a bed in over a decade but they find each other in the dark like a hundred times before. Ronan lies on his back and Adam finds that the space in the crook of Ronan's neck still smells like Cabeswater's moss. He rests his head there and wraps an arm around Ronan's middle and sleep comes swiftly.

The light outside the window it's still stained purple when Adam hears Ronan getting out of bed, he opens his eyes and Ronan is standing by the end of the bed putting his clothes on, and turns when he hears the sheets rustling. 

"Go back to sleep. I have to let the dogs out and check on the chickens and then go back to the stables to see the foal but I'll be back around nine. We can have breakfast together. If you want."

Ronan's hair is a nest of messy curls and all Adam wants is to sink his hands through it and thread the curls around his fingers. 

_"Grá geal…"_ the ley line whispers. 

Ronan hears the words resonating through his mind and Adam can see him visibly shivering, his pulse jumps in his neck and his eyes, when he looks back at Adam, are Prussian blue, burning.

Adam gets out of bed and he can see Ronan tracking his movement like a deer tracks any noise around the woods, he can see Ronan's tense shoulders and how he is about to bolt if Adam is not careful.

They have both been hurt enough for several lifetimes and Adam has done more damage than he had ever thought possible to one of the few people who had loved him despite everything and above everyone, and he is determined not to do it again. He approaches Ronan slowly like he would a dangerous creature, even if he is well aware of the fact that he is the one who can break them. 

"I am going to kiss you now." Adam says.

Ronan doesn't answer, but his breathing gets louder in the quiet room. 

"I am going to kiss you. Tell me if you don't want me to."

Adam takes another step and they are now standing a breath away, Ronan looks at Adam's mouth and bites his own lip but doesn't move.

"I am going to kiss you."

"Yes." Ronan breathes out. 

They come together gently this time, Adam gives in to his desire and threads his fingers in Ronan's hair. Ronan gasps in his mouth and his hands are a brand of heath on Adam's bare hips. They hold each other in the faint light of the morning and Adam can feel their powers surging with the beat of their hearts. It moves through them with the flow of their blood, and they shiver against one another. Ronan skims his hand up Adam's back and Adam arches against him, pulling at his hair. The kiss turns from gentle to intense in the space of one breath and Adam wants him so completely he can barely breathe. Ronan's is so familiar and yet so beautifully new under his hands and against his lips, and he desperately wants to know him anew, he wants to be known again, to be loved again. 

"So dangerous, God… You're so dangerous."

Ronan trails a line of fire down Adam's neck and his voice is all but wrecked after just one kiss, and Adam feels so fiercely happy, he burns with it. 

They are about to move back to the bed when there is a loud bark coming from outside the door and Ronan drops his head on Adam's shoulder groaning.

"Damn… They are going to wreck the house if I don't let them out. I'm sorry."

Ronan sounds so contrite that Adam can't help but smile at him, he gives him a small, lingering kiss and pushes him towards the door. 

"Just go and release the beasts, I'll get dressed and I will meet you outside. I'll catch up with you."

Ronan lingers for a moment and before opening the door he steals another kiss, leaving Adam standing there watching the five dogs jumping around their master fighting for attention.

"Yeah, yeah I love you too, you spoiled things. Let's go."

Adam watches him go and stands by the door, listening to the dogs clamoring through the house, to Ronan talking to them in Irish, clipping leashes and then closing the front door. When silence falls around him he looks around and wonders what his life would have been if he had not broken up with Ronan. Would have they ended up here? Would have this been his future? 

He knows how futile this type of questions are, what ifs are just another form of regret and he has enough of these already. All he has it's now and, for once in his life, he has no project, no goal to strive for, all he has it's this, for as long as it will last, for as long and as much Ronan will allow him to be in his life. 

He gets dressed and after a quick trip to the bathroom he runs out of the house. Outside dawn is breaking and the air is cool and rich with brine and the deep breaths of the ocean, he looks around for Ronan and he spots him walking towards the turf, the pack of dogs scattered around him. He stands on his vantage point for a few minutes watching Ronan play with the dogs, he watches the way he moves, the way he hollers with joy when _Taise_ brings back a stick, when the small old dog begs for scratches at his feet, when he ditches his shoes and steps in the cold water of the ocean, when he stretches his arms towards the sky and his body gets illuminated by the sunrise. The wild God of old shines through him with a halo of power, but the man within is a creature of gentle touches, of fireflies and tenderness, and Adam begins to realise that they are not two separate entities, but one miracle of magic and humanity. 

He calls at Ronan and the smiles he gets when Ronan turns to look at him it's brighter than the sunrise. Ronan motions at Adam to join him and they end up spending an hour by the shore, the dogs running around and smelling everything in sight. They walk for a while, quietly, listening to the world waking up, watching the sunrise promising a beautiful day. Adam takes off his shoes and follows Ronan's lead in stepping into the ocean, the shock of ice cold water makes him yelp and Ronan laughs at him and Adam retaliates by spraying him with water. The dogs follow suit and they end up splashing around like kids, and Adam is filled with a rush of simple, reckless joy, like when he and Ronan used to do something stupid and dangerous that always made him feel alive and free. 

"You're a menace, Parrish! You're going to dry off _Samhradh_ , the stinkiest dog this side of Ireland, congratulations!"

Adam just laughs and runs alongside _Samhradh_ , the dog having taken a sudden liking to him. 

Ronan starts calling his brood back after a while and they start making their way towards the house, halfway there _Madra Giobach_ stops and looks up at Ronan with pleading eyes, Ronan picks him up, brushes his fur back from his eyes and calls him spoiled, but he holds the old dog against his chest, pushing his jacket around him. Ronan catches Adam looking at him and he is quick to say: "He's old… and spoiled. I found him in one of the stables two years ago, he was a bag of bones and fleas, but… I couldn't leave him you know? I'm sure he fakes it half the time, but… just in case."

"You're a big, old softie. It's okay, I won't tell anyone and you can still keep your street cred of being a tough guy." 

"Fuck you, Parrish. I'm tough."

Adam laughs and he makes sure he is enough ahead of Ronan before he adds: "Sure, you are. Tough, but gentle. Just like Jon Snow."

Adam doesn't wait for Ronan's reply, knowing full well that it will be a long tirade of "fuck yous" and he starts running towards the house, the rest of the dogs at his heels. He hasn't felt this light or free in what feels like a lifetime and pushes his legs up the small slope, running at full speed until his lungs burn and he all but collapses on the soft, wet grass in front of the house. The sky above looks so close he can touch it and he stretches his arm upwards, feeling the beauty of the place blanketing him. When Ronan enters his field of vision he gives him a blinding smile, something unfettered and soft, a mirror of his simple joy. 

Ronan puts the dog down and kneels by Adam's side, he picks a blade of grass off of Adam's hair and puts it between his lips; they don't need to speak in a moment like this, the whole world around them is a living word, something alive and primal that breathes life inside their hearts.

Ronan pulls him to his feet and they embrace in front the house, they breathe each other in, bridging the years they have spent apart with touches, with the beating of their hearts.

They stand like that until the dogs start demanding attention and they make their way inside the house. It's barely seven, the table still has the remains of the previous night's dinner and they sit on the floor drying the dogs off, threading small laughter while Ronan tells him about all the troubles his dogs have gotten in. They clean up and give the dogs their food and then Ronan takes him behind the house where there is a small chicken coop, they collect fresh eggs and Ronan tells him the name of all his chickens, making Adam laugh at yet more Game of Thrones references. 

"I can't believe you called your rooster, Ned. Does he know that the chopping block is waiting for him?"

"You think you're funny don't you, Parrish?"

"I'm hilarious and you know it."

They have breakfast together and Adam can't hardly believe that they can be like this with each other not only after all these years, but after all that they have told one another in the past twenty-four hours. Something more than the past, more than unforgivable mistakes and deep-seated wounds binds them together and, finally, Adam is able to see that kind of ties are not a prison, but a lifeline, they are something woven together that makes them stronger. 

He is not so naïve to think that all their problems are solved by desire and this new found camaraderie, there are so many things that are against them, first of all his inability to find out who and what he is supposed to be, not to mention the fact that they live on two different continents and that there is so much past that needs mending, starting with Ronan's resentment for Adam abandoning Opal, and all the other friendships he has broken.

"You're thinking so loud they're going to be able to hear you all the way in Derry."

Adam looks up from his plate, having been lost in thoughts, he had not realised he had fallen silent. 

"What is it, Adam?"

Adam could choose to avoid voicing his fears and thoughts, why ruin a moment of peace? But he cannot find it in himself not to be truthful to Ronan, a person who has always valued truth above all else. 

"I don't want to lose you again. I don't want to lose us again." 

He knows that this truth doesn't contain the hurt of abandonment, but it is a truth nonetheless. He doesn't want to be without Ronan, without the feeling of being known, of being loved. 

"But?"

Ronan is surgically precise in his question, a single word contains all of Adam's doubts and fears.

"But I don't know who I am. I don't know what to do with my life, and you live here and I have a job in DC and it is so fucking hard. It is so damn hard, Ronan." 

Ronan sits back in his chair, his long legs stretching under the table, his bare feet brushing Adam's, a small touch of comfort he can offer without overwhelming him. 

"Adam you don't have to find a solution to everything today."

Ronan is too calm, is too rational and Adam bristles, how did the boy made of thorns and nightmares turn into this man? Adam is happy Ronan has clearly found a balance and a place where his daemons have finally been defeated, but his jealous nature can't help but think why is Ronan so much better than him at living his life? Why is he failing while Ronan is thriving?

Venom burns on his tongue, but before he can say anything Ronan disarms him with his own truth.

"It has taken me over a decade to sort some of my shit out, Adam. After we broke up I was even more of a mess. My dreams turned into more nightmares and I fought with everyone. Gansey moved to fucking Wales to study, and Matthew moved to Richmond with Declan and I drank in every fucking bar up and down the I-64. It wasn't just you, of course. There was so much trauma in my past that one way or another I had to find a way to deal with it, or I was going to die before I turned twenty-five. I got to a point where I did not care about a single thing, not even Matthew. I kept thinking that I had created him like some sort of Dr. Frankenstein and what right did I have to keep him tied to a life like mine? The day I realised that I was so fucked up that I was ready to die and condemn my brother to a non life in a dream state, I realised I needed help."

Ronan takes a moment to compose himself, the memories still painful to relive. 

"I went to see Dick and we talked for a week solid after he made me sober up in his dorm room. We talked about what we used to be before my dad, before he died, before everything we believed had turned upside down. We talked about how he was in therapy because after dying he could not stop questioning if this life was truly his own or what you and I had gifted him with. He told me how things had started getting a little better, how being able to talk to the therapist had helped his relationship with Blue and with his family, how it was incredibly painful at times, but that he wanted to keep at it, because he had been given a second chance and he didn't want to squander the magic he had been filled with. So, when I got back to the States, I went to see Declan and he helped me find a therapist. We moved back to The Barns and I started to heal, and it was fucking slow, and I hated every second of it and I fought with Declan constantly, but it got better, it got better."

Adam stands up and Ronan looks at him, and his eyes are clear, the clinical blue sanitised by truth. Adam had known the boy, had witnessed the God, but this man is something forged through grief and strengthened by hope and Adam wants to know him, he wants to be worthy of him. He wants to find a place where he can be with this man on even ground. 

"How do you say I'm proud of you in Irish?" Adam asks.

"Tá mé bródúil as tú."

Adam brushes a kiss on Ronan's lips and says it back: "Tá mé bródúil as tú. I am. Very much."

Ronan tries to say something else, but Adam stops him with another small kiss. "Take the compliment, Lynch. It's the truth."

They end up spending the entire day together, first at the stables, where they meet Bea and they check on the foal, then Ronan drives them to buy feed and hay. Adam meets more of the locals and every one of them seem to not only know Ronan, but they chat with him smiling and asking about his ponies and his dogs. Old ladies seem especially fond of him and Adam cannot help but smile at their open protectiveness whenever he is introduced to them, as if they have to make sure of what his intentions are towards their favourite adopted son. They eat lunch by the side of the road munching on sandwiches and Adam discovers that putting chips in between the filling may be odd, but it's definitely delicious. Ronan kisses the salt off his lips and Adam feels like a teenager again, blood fizzing in his veins.

On the drive back Ronan turns the truck stereo on and Adam is delighted to find out that Ronan still has terrible taste in music. He tells him so only for Ronan to turn the volume up and give him a shit-eating grin. Ronan drops him off at the hotel so he can get changed and promises to pick him up in an hour.

Catriona is behind the desk and gives him a broad, knowing smile. The gossip mill had been in full force after some had spotted him and Ronan together, and the whole village is already speculating on the nature of their relationship. Adam feels himself flushing, but Catriona just smiles and tells him. "Be kind to one another, peata."

Kindness is not a language Adam is familiar with, but he is determined to learn it, not only for Ronan's sake, but his own as well. 

He showers and gets changed in record time and it is outside the hotel well before the time they are supposed to meet. He decides to start walking, the evening is cool, but dry and there is still enough light to enjoy the beauty that surrounds him. He is almost at the church when he spots Aoife, he waves at her, but the young girl gives him a murderous look and tells him: "You think you can take him away? You can't. He would never abandon his ponies. Never. He belongs here. He belongs with us! You hurt him, I know you did." Her voice breaks with fear and she brushes off her tears with the back of her hand. Adam pretends not to see her tears, and she takes a deep breath, trying, once again to look tough. She reminds him so much of Blue that he can't help but feeling a sharp pang of nostalgia and love.

"I don't want to take him away, Aoife. I would never do that. He loves it here, he loves his animals and I know he loves you. All I want is to be one of the people he loves. I will leave soon and I don't know what will happen then, but Ronan's choices are his own. I hurt him once, you're right and I'm trying very hard not to do it again." 

She doesn't look swayed by his words but she stops shaking with rage and then tells him: "You better try really, really hard because if you do hurt him, you'll have me to deal with." 

Adam has never been threatened by a thirteen years old, but she clearly means it and nods, hoping to look sufficiently chastised. Ronan's car appears seconds later and Aoife takes up running towards the village without looking back. In the car Ronan asks him what was that all about and Adam tells him that he has been given the “shovel talk” by a kid. Ronan shakes his head, but doesn’t look surprised or upset. 

“She reminds me of Blue.” Adam tells him.

“Yeah, they are cut from the same cloth.” Ronan says. “She loves horses more than people and she’s a terror to all the kids around here. Her parents died when she was three and her nana has been raising her.”

Adam remembers Aoife calling her nan _bean feasa,_ a seer. He tells Ronan about how she had called Adam _draíodóir,_ how she seemed unfazed by it. 

“Does she know you’re the Greywaren?” He asks. 

“Not in the way we know. She knows I am _eile,_ other, different, but not the nature of what or who I am. Her nana has some of the same powers as the witches of Fox Way, but she is alone and the church has been trying to beat her gift into submission since her first communion. I still struggle with my faith and who I am. I can only imagine how someone her age must feel.”

Adam wants to tell him that he doesn’t need a church to believe in the divine, Ronan is a God among humans, his own existence proof of something more, something powerful and ancient. He wants Ronan to see himself the way he has seen him by the shore, standing between two worlds, Godly and powerful, fragile and human. Beautiful without cruelty.

“Am I _eile_ , too? Adam ends up saying. 

Ronan parks his car in front of the house and turns to look at Adam, his sharp eyes searching Adam’s face, reading Adam’s fear.

“Would it be so bad if you were?” Ronan asks.

“I don’t know. I buried everything Persephone had taught me for over twelve years. I pretended I had never experienced being so full of power to feel almost drunk with it. I squandered my gift, do I even deserve being the Magician?”

Ronan takes one of Adam’s hands in his own and Adam can feel the current of power humming at the simple contact. “It’s not a matter of deserving, Adam. If that was the case I have no right at being a dreamer with my track record, not to mention my father. It’s not about being worthy, it’s about being. Dick once read me some old text in Latin or Greek, or it could have been Welsh, who knows, and it said something like _“Magic is neither good, nor bad. It just is. Intention is what makes the result of magic good or bad.”_

“That doesn’t bode well for me, then. Considering my actions, my intentions are clearly leaning towards bad.” Adam says.

Ronan squeezes Adam’s hand so hard Adam yelps in pain. 

“What the hell, Ronan?”

“That was for the martyr-like self pity. I’m the catholic one, remember? Listen to me, and try to really understand. You made mistakes, congratulations, you’re human. So am I. And not only I’ve made mistakes, but I’m pretty sure I’ll make more and you will too. Don’t you see? Being who we are, what we are, whatever that is, doesn’t stop us from being human and being stupid, and occasionally even cruel. We are more than just what we can do, Adam.”

Adam closes his eyes and calls at the power of the ley line, and it immediately moves through him like a tidal wave. It floods him with acceptance and the answering call is filled with the pulsating rhythm of happiness.

When he opens his eyes the inside of the car smells like moss and Ronan’s curls are crowned with snowdrops. 

_“Draíodóir.”_

Ronan’s voice is warm, he touches the flowers in his hair and his fingers come away dusted with silver. 

_“Tá tú go hálainn.”_

Ronan says it again in English and the only thing that Adam can do is kiss the awe from his lips, taste the soft wonder in his mouth, feel Ronan’s bright, tender heart in his hands, in his body, in the deepest core of his magic. He tries to bring Ronan closer, but they are not seventeen anymore and the car is too small for two grown men. 

“You need to walk the dogs?” Adam asks, his voice roughened by desire.

“What?” Ronan’s brain is still foggy with need and Adam’s words barely register.

“The dogs, Ronan. Do they need walking? Because if the answer is no, then you need to take me to your bed, or the locals will have something very juicy to discuss tomorrow.” 

It takes Ronan two attempts to open the car’s door and Adam is even enchanted by his clumsiness. How on earth has he lived without the magic and beauty that is Ronan Lynch for all these years? Ronan grabs his hand and pins him against the car. Adam’s pulse jumps and he winds his arms around Ronan’s neck, he is about to go for another kiss but Ronan stops him.

“Before we go inside, before… Just tell me one truth. Just one.”

Adam’s answer is something that has been growing inside him for thirteen years.

“You are the only home I've ever had.”

_“Grá mo chroí.”_

Ronan’s kiss is almost brutal in its intensity, Adam can feel him shaking against him and he grabs fistfuls of Ronan’s shirt to keep him closer still. When they finally manage to walk inside the house they don’t speak, Ronan stops to make sure that the dogs are okay and then they are alone inside Ronan’s room. 

They look at each other and they are not teenagers anymore, they are not each other’s first anymore, but there is a tentative shyness in both of them. Ronan is the first to break it, his old recklessness still making him bolder. He strips quickly and Adam’s breath catches in his throat. 

“Jesus, Lynch. Warn a man.” 

Ronan’s laughter breaks the tension and he walks closer to Adam, his eyes never leaving Adam’s face. He starts unbuttoning Adam’s collared shirt and Adam let him do it, he lets him undress him methodically, slowly. 

The bedroom’s window is open and Adam can hear the ocean breathing, he can feel its pulse in his wrists. He kisses Ronan’s eyelids closed and whispers his name like a prayer, like an incantation. Ronan’s heart clashes against his chest with the force of a war drum and the rush of blood fills his mouth with copper.

 _" Amhrán ar mo chroí._ ”

They lay on the bed, arms and legs entwined, Ronan’s hair is a silvered halo of dark curls and crushed snowdrops, Ronan looks at him with a fierce, fragile hope, and for once there is no doubt in Adam’s heart that they will find a way to get back to one another. 

When he wakes up in the morning heather is twined around his wrists, and they are lying on a bed of soft, crushed moss. Adam rests his head on Ronan’s chest and listens to his heart telling their story with every beat.

_Baile._
    
    
      
    

  
  


~ The End ~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Irish Translations:
> 
> Taise = Ghost [Translation here](https://www.focloir.ie/en/dictionary/ei/ghost)  
> Bean = Lady [Translation here](https://www.focloir.ie/en/dictionary/ei/lady)  
> Gaoth Liath = Grey Wind [Translation here](https://www.wordhippo.com/what-is/dynamic-translation/3d7efbfc09119a97ab1f010102c0b0a5a83849a3.html)  
> Samhradh = Summer [Translation here](https://www.focloir.ie/en/dictionary/ei/summer)  
> Madra Giobach = Shaggy Dog [Translation here](https://www.focloir.ie/en/dictionary/ei/shaggy)  
> Bhfuil tú chomh contúirteach = you are so dangerous [Translation here](https://www.wordhippo.com/what-is/dynamic-translation/46916ef9bb1dbb2fd571c873ea2319a2da639cc1.html)  
> Bandia, a thabhairt dó ar ais dom = Goddess, give him back to me [Translation here](https://www.wordhippo.com/what-is/dynamic-translation/17fbfba08f8866cc71fda46f8ac3c3528c15d36e.html)  
> Tá mé beo, tá tú beo. Táimid le chéile. Le anseo. = I am alive, you are alive. We are together. Here. [Translation here](https://www.wordhippo.com/what-is/dynamic-translation/a16741d55e4ae999e5831db9e91f0903251e6b55.html)  
> Tá mé bródúil as tú = I am proud of you [Translation here](https://www.wordhippo.com/what-is/dynamic-translation/e5e2d49c928930bebae85adfb0d1be5d77f8bccb.html)  
> Tá tú go hálainn. = You are beautiful [Translation here](https://www.focloir.ie/en/dictionary/ei/beautiful)  
> Grá mo chroí = My beloved/love of my heart [Translation here](https://www.wordhippo.com/what-is/the/irish-word-for-bf00b044ec8803b9920e0b8366cd1554371baf6a.html)  
> "Amhrán ar mo chroí... = Song of my heart [Translation here](https://www.wordhippo.com/what-is/dynamic-translation/c9eba44a5d706ae18aa18750f0d0bb15cd0e259a.html)  
> "Mo ri." = My king [Translation here](https://www.wordhippo.com/what-is/the/irish-word-for-58a560ee53f41d510e9cf1533646a51e1f6a2070.html)  
> Baile = Home [Translation here](https://www.focloir.ie/en/dictionary/ei/home)


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